essay peer review online

🤖 AI Peer Review Generator

Unleash the power of constructive feedback with our Peer Review generator! Boost productivity, inspire growth and foster collaboration through concise and impartial reviews.

Step into the world of Peer Review, a keystone process in knowledge production and a path to academic excellence and innovation. This collaborative work is a robust gateway that helps to maintain the integrity of scholarly communication, enhancing the quality of research and fostering creativity among authors.

The potency of Peer Review cannot be understated – it bolsters scientific credibility, aids in preventing pseudoscience, and contributes to career development, making it indispensable in academic and research domains. Engage in an insightful exploration of this fascinating endeavour and discover how it’s shaping the way we understand and interpret the world around us.

What is a Peer Review?

Peer review is the keystone of quality control in diverse domains like scientific research, book writing, academia, and so on. It’s a formal, structured process where external experts (peers) review, scrutinize, and evaluate someone’s work, primarily to ensure it corresponds to the established quality standards before it gets public or initially, published. Peer reviewers critically appraise a piece of work, whether a research paper, a book manuscript, a project, or a grant application, to validate its veracity, accuracy, and significance. This stimulates healthy competition, improves performance quality, and advances innovation uptake.

In essence, the peer review process serves as an effective ‘checks and balances’ mechanism for maintaining high standards of quality and credibility in many professional fields. The reviewers, who are often experts in the related field, typically provide detailed feedback and recommendations on the work submitted for examination. These evaluations may lead to the work being accepted, rejected, or perhaps, needing additional revisions. Despite potential limitations such as reviewer bias or time-consuming nature, the peer review process is nevertheless invaluable for driving excellence and setting a bar that ensures that only top-quality, trustworthy work is disseminated to the public and academia.

Why Use a Peer Review Generator?

In the academic, scientific, and professional spheres, peer review is a pivotal process that offers various advantages. It involves assessing another individual’s work critically but constructively to improve quality and efficacy. Despite the vital importance of this procedure, it can become a painstaking feat, especially when multiple reviews need to be completed within a specified timeline. Here is where a Peer Review Generator comes into play, providing a seamless and efficient alternative. The following are some of the primary benefits of using this generator:

• Efficiency and Time-saving: A Peer Review Generator significantly reduces the time expended on generating and completing reviews. It can analyze extensive amounts of information in a fraction of the time, thereby enabling users to effectively meet tight deadlines.
• Quality Assurance: The tool ensures high-quality and objective reviews. It eliminates human errors, inconsistencies, and biases that could influence a peer review’s impartiality and competence.
• Versatility: With such a generator, users can customize their reviews according to specific requirements. It allows for a versatile set of reviews for different purposes or academic disciplines.
• Collaborative Improvement: The generator can offer structured feedback, improving the overall process of peer review. It encourages more targeted and constructive criticism, promoting positive growth and development.
• Ease of Access and Use: Finally, a peer review generator is user-friendly, with a simple design that allows for quick and smooth operation. It’s an accessible tool that can be used by anyone, regardless of their technical prowess.

The demand for a more streamlined, efficient, and unbiased peer-review process is evidently a pressing concern. This is where technology steps in to address these challenges, providing tools like a Peer Review Generator designed to make the peer review process not only easier but also more standardized and fair. Therefore, whether you’re an academic scholar, a professional researcher, or a subject expert, adopting a Peer Review Generator could be advantageous in managing your peer review requirements with excellence and precision.

How To Use This AI Peer Review Generator:

• Open your Taskade workspace and click “➕New project”.
• Choose “ 🤖 AI Project Studio ” and describe what you want to create.
• Use the drop-downs to define project type or upload seed sources .
• When done, customize your project to make it your own!

University Writing Program

• Peer Review
• Collaborative Writing
• Writing for Metacognition
• Supporting Multilingual Writers
• Alternatives to Grading
• Making Feedback Matter
• Responding to Multilingual Writers’ Texts
• Model Library

Written by Rebecca Wilbanks

Peer review is a workhorse of the writing classroom, for good reason. Students receive feedback from each other without the need for the instructor to comment on every submission. In commenting on each other’s work, they develop critical judgment that they can bring to bear on their own writing. Working peer review into the schedule requires students to complete a draft ahead of the final deadline and sets the expectation that they will revise. Students benefit from seeing how others executed similar writing tasks. Finally, the skills that students practice during peer review—soliciting, providing, receiving, and responding to feedback—are essential to success in both scholarly and professional contexts. 

 While students often report that they found peer review to be valuable, students and faculty sometimes worry that peer feedback may be inaccurate or unhelpful. These concerns are valid: for peer review to be successful, students must receive clear instructions about what aspects of the text to focus on and training in how to formulate responses to peer drafts. The class must develop a shared sense of standards and a language to articulate them. The good news is that when peer review is supported in these ways, substantial evidence supports peer review’s benefits. With appropriate preparation, Melzer and Bean report that three or more students collectively produce feedback analogous to that of an instructor. Some classes even use a rigorous peer review system to generate grades for assignments . 

 It’s best to put the guidelines for your peer review in writing. These guidelines could take the form of a set of questions for students to respond to, a rubric to fill out (usually the same rubric that will be used to grade the assignment), or instructions for writing a response letter to the writer. Students will also benefit from seeing examples of helpful (and less helpful) feedback comments. You can use these sample comments to push students to provide greater specificity in their feedback (Less helpful: “Nice work. You did a really good job on this assignment.” More helpful: “I really like how you responded to the claims of Author X.”) 

What to Ask of Student Reviewers

As you design the peer review, consider how you will balance these different options: 

• Asking students to identify elements in the text. This approach allows students to check that expected elements of the text are present and legible to the audience. E.g.: Highlight the sentence(s) where the author states their thesis; or, identify the part of the text where the author explains the significance of their findings. In doing so, students practice recognizing the expected components of the genre they are working in, the different forms these components may take, and they help each other spot when a component is missing or underdeveloped.  
• Asking students to record their reactions as a reader. This option harnesses the power of peer review to provide a real audience. Here are some examples of reader-response comments: “Oh, now I see why you brought up [x]; it seems like your point is [y]”; “I’m having trouble with this sentence; I had to go back and read it a couple times”; “I understand this paragraph to be saying [x]…”; “This is a really neat point; I hadn’t thought of making that connection before.” This approach is based on the idea that understanding how one’s writing is coming across to readers and making changes accordingly is an essential part of the revision process.  
• Asking students to make judgments and/ or give advice. Students may evaluate the work with a rubric or be asked to summarize what is working well and what the student should prioritize for revision. This approach requires more training and practice with models to ensure that students and faculty have a shared understanding of how to apply the assessment criteria, and will be more successful as students gain more exposure to the genre they are working in. In these peer review guidelines from an upper-level writing course, you can see how I incorporated identification, reader-response, and evaluation.  

How to Structure a Peer Review Session

• A workshop with the entire class or section. In this case, everyone reads and comments on the same draft(s), often ahead of time. This format allows the instructor to guide the conversation and may be particularly helpful at the beginning of the semester. You may use the workshop format to review a sample assignment from a previous semester as practice before students review each other’s work.  
• As an alternative to having each student read and comment on each draft individually, Melzer and Bean suggest having groups exchange papers with other groups, and collaboratively write responses to each paper.  
• Asynchronous and online. By using the peer review function on Canvas, or online platforms such as Peerceptiv, CPR, or Eli review, instructors can assign peer review as a homework assignment and avoid taking up class time. Applications designed expressly for peer review include features that encourage high quality review; for example, CPR requires students to pass a “calibration test” (in which they give feedback on models that have already been graded by the instructor), while Peerceptiv allows students to rate the quality of peer reviews during the revision process in an anonymous system that awards points for helpful feedback.  

How to Get the Most out of Peer Review

Here are a few other suggestions to make peer review as effective as possible:

• Give students feedback on their feedback. If students are working in class, you can circulate through the different groups, reinforce insightful comments, and ask follow-up questions to get them to add depth or consider new aspects. You can also spot-check peer reviews and highlight examples of good feedback or ways to improve comments in class. Finally, you might ask students what feedback was most helpful during the revision process and recognize reviewers who do especially good work.  
• Be aware that some students may put their energy into editing the paper, focusing on grammar and sentence structure rather than higher-level issues. This is especially likely when English is not the first language of the author being reviewed. Make sure to emphasize that the goal of peer review is to focus on higher-level concerns, and recurring issues of expression that affect readability—not to line-edit. The Sweetland Center for Writing at the University of Michigan has guidelines and evaluation criteria for peer reviews tailored for situations involving multilingual students.  
• To encourage students to make use of the feedback, consider giving students time in class after the peer review to start working on their revisions or make notes about how they will begin.  

Cited and Recommended Sources

• Corbett, Steven J., et al., editors. Peer Pressure, Peer Power: Theory and Practice in Peer Review and Response for the Writing Classroom . First edition, Fountainhead Press, 2014. 
• Corbett, Steven J., and Michelle LaFrance, editors. Student Peer Review and Response: A Critical Sourcebook . Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2018. 
• Double, Kit S., et al. “The Impact of Peer Assessment on Academic Performance: A Meta-Analysis of Control Group Studies.” Educational Psychology Review , vol. 32, no. 2, June 2020, pp. 481–509. Springer Link , https://doi.org/10.1007/s10648-019-09510-3 . 
• Huisman, Bart, et al. “Peer Feedback on Academic Writing: Undergraduate Students’ Peer Feedback Role, Peer Feedback Perceptions and Essay Performance.” Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education , vol. 43, no. 6, Aug. 2018, pp. 955–68. Taylor and Francis+NEJM , https://doi.org/10.1080/02602938.2018.1424318 . 
• Lundstrom, Kristi, and Wendy Baker. “To Give Is Better than to Receive: The Benefits of Peer Review to the Reviewer’s Own Writing.” Journal of Second Language Writing , vol. 18, no. 1, Mar. 2009, pp. 30–43. ScienceDirect , https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jslw.2008.06.002 . 
• Melzer, Dan, and John C. Bean. Engaging Ideas: The Professor’s Guide to Integrating Writing, Critical Thinking, and Active Learning in the Classroom . 3rd ed., Jossey-Bass, 2021, https://www.amazon.com/Engaging-Ideas-Professors-Integrating-Classroom/dp/1119705401 . 
• Price, Edward, et al. “Validity of Peer Grading Using Calibrated Peer Review in a Guided-Inquiry, Conceptual Physics Course.” Physical Review Physics Education Research , vol. 12, no. 2, Dec. 2016, p. 020145. APS , https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevPhysEducRes.12.020145 . 
• Rahimi, Mohammad. “Is Training Student Reviewers Worth Its While? A Study of How Training Influences the Quality of Students’ Feedback and Writing.” Language Teaching Research , vol. 17, no. 1, Jan. 2013, pp. 67–89. SAGE Journals , https://doi.org/10.1177/1362168812459151 . 
• Using Peer Review to Improve Student Writing. University of Michigan Sweetland Center for Writing. Accessed 15 Jan. 2023. 
• van den Berg, Ineke, et al. “Designing Student Peer Assessment in Higher Education: Analysis of Written and Oral Peer Feedback.” Teaching in Higher Education , vol. 11, no. 2, Apr. 2006, pp. 135–47. srhe.tandfonline.com (Atypon) , https://doi.org/10.1080/13562510500527685 . 

Better learning through peer feedback

PeerStudio makes peer feedback easier for instructors to manage, and students to learn from. It automates away the tedious aspects of peer reviewing, and learners use a comparison-based interface that helps them see work as instructors see it.

More than 40000 learners in dozens of universities use PeerStudio to learn design, writing, psychology, and more.

Used by happy instructors and students at

Research-based, comparative peer review

Comparative peer reviewing allows students to see what instructors see

PeerStudio leverages the theory of contrasting cases: comparing similar artifacts helps people see deeper, subtler distinctions between them. Think of wine tasting. It's much easier to notice the flavors when you compare one wine to another.

How PeerStudio uses comparisons

When students review in PeerStudio, they use a rubric that instructors specify. In addition to the rubric, PeerStudio finds a comparison submission within the pool of submissions from their classmates. While reviewing, students compare the target submission to this comparison submission using the provided rubric.

AI-backed, always improving

PeerStudio uses an artifical-intelligence backend to find just the right comparison for each learner and submission. (Among other features, we use learners' history of reviewing, and that of their classmates to identify optimal comparison submissions.) This backend is always learning, with accuracy improving even within the same assignment.

Guided reviewing

Learners often want to review well, but don't know how. We both help students learn how to review through interactive guides, and automatically detect poor reviewing.

How PeerStudio creates a better classroom

Inspire students, inspire students with peer work.

Most students in college today see so little of the amazing work their classmates do. PeerStudio creates an opportunity to see inspiring work and get more feedback on it. Instructors also tell us that their students enjoy writing, designing and completing assignments for a real audience, and how the benefits of peer reviewing spill over into clearer presentations and more insightful questions in class.

CLOUD-BASED

Work as your students do.

PeerStudio is cloud-based, so it is available from any computer, and allows students to view most common assignment materials without any additional software: PDFs, videos (including auto-embedding Youtube), formatted text (bold, italics, tables,...) are all supported. And because it's backed up every night, your students (and you!) never have to worry about losing work.

CLASSROOM MANAGEMENT

Automated assignment of reviewers.

With traditional peer feedback tools, instructors have more, not less, work. You not only need to write the assignment and the rubric, but also assign students to review each other, make sure they do it on time, re-assign students who miss the deadline and so on.

PeerStudio automates it all. It uses an AI-backed to assign reviewers to submissions, automatically deals with balancing out reviewer load, and more. It even sends email reminders to students who haven't submitted their work or reviewed others.

REMAIN IN CONTROL

Grant deadline-extensions, keep an eye on review quality, and more.

PeerStudio automates the busywork, but you remain in control. On your dashboard, you can grant one-time exceptions, track who's late, even read individual reviews. Many instructors also use their dashboard to find examples of excellent work to show in class, or to recognize excellent peer feedback.

We can help you implement peer reviewing correctly and set up PeerStudio in your class. To get started, schedule a time to chat with us.

What our instructors say

PeerStudio has helped teach everything from design, English, music, and more.

Ready to get started?

We're also happy to help you think through introducing peer reviewing in your classroom, regardless of whether you use PeerStudio. Get in touch with us at [email protected] .

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Your chance of acceptance, your chancing factors, extracurriculars, looking for online essay review platforms.

Hi all! As I'm starting to work on my college application essays, I was wondering if there are any go-to online platforms where I can get some constructive feedback on my essays. Any recommendations?

Hi there! It's great that you're starting to work on your college application essays and seeking feedback. There are several online platforms where you can get constructive feedback on your essays. Here are a few recommendations:

1. CollegeVine: CollegeVine offers an essay review platform called Essay Peer Review where you can submit your essay for review by other students. The more essays you review for others, the more feedback points you earn which can then be exchanged for having your own essay reviewed. This way, you get valuable feedback from your peers and also learn from reading others' essays.

2. Reddit: You can consider subreddits like r/CollegeEssayReview, which is specifically dedicated to college essay reviews. Users there are often willing to provide feedback on your essays. Keep in mind, as with any online forum, the quality of feedback may vary, so use discretion when incorporating suggestions.

3. Ask for help from your high school's writing center, English teachers, or school counselor if they offer essay review services.

4. Local writing workshops: Some libraries and community centers hold writing workshops that can be helpful for getting essay feedback. These may be held in-person or online, depending on your location.

Remember, when using online platforms, be cautious about sharing personal information within your essay, since you're sharing it with a wide audience. You may want to consider removing or altering any identifying details before posting.

Lastly, don't forget to seek feedback from people you know and trust, like your friends, family, or teachers. Sometimes, having someone who knows you well to give input on your essay can be incredibly valuable. Good luck!

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Essay prompts & guides

At CollegeVine, our goal is to make the college application process a little less stressful, so we’ve compiled the latest essay prompts for the top 100 schools in one easy, searchable database.

Review a peer essay

Build confidence and improve your own writing by reviewing peer essays. Get into the mindset of a reader trying to understand the writer, just like an admissions officer.

Differentiating yourself is more important than ever

With more schools going test-optional, college essays can help you stand out from the rest, and they can often make the difference between rejection and acceptance.

Essays are 35% of your application

Grades alone won’t get you accepted to your dream school. The college essay is an extremely important piece of your college application. Essays help you stand out from the rest.

Show your personality

Admissions officers want to better understand who you are through your essays. Showcasing your unique view of the world and the experiences that have led you to where you are is pivotal.

Become memorable to admissions

Admissions officers only spend a few minutes on each application. Ensure your essay will be memorable by getting honest feedback from people who don’t already know your story well.

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Peer Review With Digital Tools

I nteractions are a key component of student learning in online and face-to-face settings including student-instructor interactions, student-content interactions, and student-student interactions. Peer review is one type of student-student interaction that can build classroom community and deepen student learning (Nilson 2018). Feedback is a crucial part of learning but doesn’t only have to come from instructors –peer feedback can potentially save some time for instructors to do other important work with students (Brigati & Swann 2015). Guiding students to useful, productive peer feedback strengthens student performance and provides students with more feedback for learning growth.

How to Get Started

Best practices.

• Digital Tools
• Recording: Peer Review with Digital Tools and Moodle Workshop 2/2023
• Start the peer-review process with students by explaining the purpose of using peer review in your course. Stay positive and share why this is a worthwhile learning experience. Share that peer feedback should be descriptive (not evaluative) and the goal is for it to be formative, meaning that it will help change and develop future work that students submit.
• Will the peer feedback be graded or earn points in the class?
• What should the size of peer groups be and how many reviews should each assignment receive?
• Create a peer review feedback sheet or co-create wone with students –be sure it is aligned with goals/objectives for the assignment and any final evaluations that will occur.
• After collection, redistribute papers randomly along with a grading rubric. After students have evaluated the papers ask them to exchange with a neighbor, evaluate the new paper, and then compare notes.
• After completing an exam, have students compare and discuss answers with a partner. You may offer them the opportunity to submit a new answer, dividing points between the two.
• In a small class, ask students to bring one copy of their paper with their name on it and one or two copies without a name. Collect the “name” copy and redistribute the others for peer review. Provide feedback on all student papers. Collect the peer reviews and return papers to their authors.
• For group presentations, require the class to evaluate the group’s performance using a predetermined marking scheme.
• When working on group projects, have students evaluate each group member’s contribution to the project on a scale of 1-10. Require students to provide rationale for how and why they awarded points.
• Provide student models/examples of quality feedback and guidance for what students should do and what their feedback should “look like.” Align the feedback examples and expectations with learning objectives for students on the assignment requiring peer feedback. In the examples you share with students, model clear, constructive feedback with positive feedback as a first step. Note: the positive feedback is not praise about the student or person but specific to the task. 
• Infographic example of “How to Give Awesome Feedback”

• Find the thesis statement and three pieces of evidence aligned with the thesis statement
• Identify terminology from class used in the lab report
• Identify the strongest sentence in the conclusion
• Describe the organization of the methods and materials section of the lab report. Are their parts that confused you? If so, give suggestions for what might need clarification or expansion.
• Look for statements in the posting that directly connect to our class lectures and discussions. Point these out and ask for clarification if needed.

There are many peer review forms, worksheets, checklists, and so on available for different content areas and can be found by searching online. Here are some templates/examples:

• Essay peer review form with reviewer comment area and writer reflection/notes area
• A rubric to self-assess and peer-assess mathematical problem solving tasks of college students (article with peer checklist examples)
• Argumentative essay rubric with a column for peer feedback
• Group/team peer review checklist (make a copy to edit)
• RISE Model with open-ended/fill-in-the blank feedback (make a copy to edit)
• Peer Review Cover Sheet Example for a Presentation
• Presentation Rubric Checklist Rubric
• Choose a digital tool to support the peer review process — see the digital tool section (tab) for details. Recommended tools include PlayPosit Peer Review, Moodle Workshop Activity, Turnitin PeerMark, Google Workspace Tools
• Ideally allow students to keep revising and working with the peer feedback to make improvements in their work. This may mean fewer assignments get done in a class but students may show more growth and improvement in skills/deeper understanding of course concepts.
• Provide training to students and guided worksheets or reference materials to help them give better quality feedback. As part of this process, include examples and models of what effective feedback looks like.
• Explain the purpose of peer review to students, helping students realize the role of a peer-reviewer is to read and describe and not to evaluate or grade (Washington University Center for Teaching and Learning 2022). Consider asking students to analyze, react to, and describe their peers’ work rather than grade or evaluate.
• In guides, worksheets, or expectations ask students to give positive feedback first when describing the work of their peers (Nilson & Goodson 2018).
• In an online course, give a time estimate for how long student should expect to spend on a peer review. This could be part of a partnership contract for peer review (you can also consider having students design contracts together).
• Teaching Students to Evaluate Each Other (from Cornell University, Center for Teaching Innovation)
• Planning and Guiding In-Class Peer Review (from Washington University, Center for Teaching and Learning)
• Peer Feedback: Making it Meaningful (by Dr. Catlin Tucker)

Digital Tools: Feature Comparison

• Moodle Workshop
• Turnitin PeerMark
• Google Workspace

Moodle Workshop Activity: Peer Review Activity for Multiple Submission Types

Moodle’s workshop activity enables the collection, review and peer assessment of students’ work. Students can submit digital files (such as documents, slides, spreadsheets, or other attachments) or type text directly into a field using the text editor. Then, depending on instructor settings and guidance, students assess each other and give comments/feedback to their peers and/or give grades to their peers. After the peer-assessment window closes, instructors review the grades given to students, make any adjustments, and then post the grades to the Moodle gradebook.

Moodle Workshop has a complicated set up procedure and a bit of a learning curve for instructors and students. Therefore it is best if you plan on using it multiple times in a course. Workshop is particularly useful for large classes in which an instructor wants to get make grading more efficient by using students to grade their peers (note: there is research to show that peer grading can be valid and reliable).

If you only want students to provide feedback to each other and have an instructor provide the grade, be sure to use the “Comments” grading strategy when setting up the Workshop activity. Then have students turn in a revised copy of an assignment in an separate Moodle assignment activity so the instructor can provide the final grade.

Student submissions can be assessed by their peers in multiple ways depending on how an instructor sets up the activity. Peers can use a “checklist” of criteria or a rubric with specific quality indicators – both must be defined by the instructor. Students are given the opportunity to assess one or more of their peers’ submissions. Submissions and reviewers may be anonymous. Students obtain two grades in a workshop activity — a grade for their submission and a grade for their assessment of their peers’ submissions. Both grades are recorded in the Moodle Gradebook. 

• Moodle Docs: Workshop Activity with video tutorial (Moodle 4)
• Moodle Docs: Using Workshop with step-by-step phase directions (Moodle 4 )
• Moodle Forum for Instructors on Using the Workshop Activity –online discussion with help and other instructors who use Workshop
• YouTube Playlist: Moodle Workshop Activity
• Example workshop with data  (Log in with username  teacher /password  moodle  and explore the grading and phases of a completed workshop on the Moodle School demo site.)
• Workshop Guide with Grade Adjustment Suggestions

Turnitin PeerMark: Peer Review Tool for Writing Assignments/Papers

PeerMark is a peer review assignment tool for essays, papers, and other writing assignments. Instructors can create and manage PeerMark assignments that allow students to read, review, and evaluate one or many papers submitted by their classmates. Reviews can be anonymous.

Instructors will create a Turnitin Assignment 2 within Moodle and then add a PeerMark assignment to the original assignment. After students have submitted writing assignments they will be given peer’s submissions to provide feedback. An instructor can determine pairings/groups for peer review or allow them to be assigned by the Turnitin system. An instructor can provide questions to guide the review – these questions can be open-ended or associated with points. Inline and pop-up comments can also be added by peers. Note: if instructors want to assign grades to students based on their work doing peer reviews, those grades will have to be added to Moodle manually.

NOTE: Turnitin does not work on a mobile device

• Turnitin PeerMark Assignments in Moodle: Instructor Guide
• Turnitin PeerMark Guide to Share with Students
• YouTube Playlist (currently being updated)
• About PeerMark™ assignments  

Google Workspace Tools: Peer Reviews not Synced with Moodle

Each of the primary Google Workspace Tools: Docs, Slides, Sheets allow for comments and assigning tasks to students. These features can help students with peer review as can annotating text by highlighting and underlining with different colors. In Google Docs, additional peer review tools include the ability to add a watermark i.e. “Draft” and use the “Suggesting” mode to make changes directly to a document that can be accepted or declined by the author/owner of the document.

For workflow, students can also create a tickable checkbox/schedule for peer review at the top of the document. Instructors can also create templates for students to use when drafting that have built in headings, question, etc. for peers to consider when reviewing — ask students to make a copy of a document or you can create a “forced copy” version of a document. Instructors can also use shared folders to organize peer reviews. Using Google Workspace tools for peer review will not automatically add grades to Moodle –instructors would need to manually add grades to Moodle. 

Features within Google Tools:

• Suggest edits in Google Docs – Computer – Docs Editors Help  
• Comments and Action Items in Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides
• How to Create a Checklist in Google Docs
• Process Suggestion: Guiding Student Peer Review – Google Drive   
• Jamboard Process Suggestion (students add work to a Jamboard and send it to their peers)
• Manage Notifications
• Google Forms: Students can send Google Forms to peers – -instructors can create Google Form templates for students to use ( example form and suggested process )

Guidance Using Google Tools in Conjunction with Moodle:

• Google Groups : Create a class folder in Drive and then share it or group folders with students –groups can be managed through Wolfware
• Use a Discussion Forum/Board: Students submit work and use the forum to give each other feedback — note: feedback will be viewable to peers. Instructors can also create forums for small peer groups.  A rubric can be attached to the Discussion Forum via “Advanced Grading”
• Moodle Assignments: Students independently use Google commenting, suggestion, annotation tools and upload a marked copy to a Moodle Assignment. A rubric can be attached to the assignment via “Advanced Grading”
• Google Assignments: Allows students to turn in work directly from Google Drive and it controls the sharing/access to documents but does not have a built in peer/collaboration feature. Use the template option and ask students to turn in the work with the peer comments. For more on Google Assignments in general use this instructor guide.
• Manual Grading in Moodle: If students are using a Google Form or shared documents in Drive folders and you want to add a grade to Moodle, add a grade item and enter the grades manually. Instructors can add multiple grade items for the creator/writer’s work and for the peers who are reviewing.

Video Project Student Submission and Peer Review

PlayPosit is an interactive video creator allowing instructors to overlay questions, discussion, web content, and other interactions on top of a video creating opportunities for students to interact with course content.

The Peer Review feature allows students to upload videos and then provide feedback on peer-submitted videos and get peer feedback for their own work. This tool is particularly useful for performance-based assignments.

Students can submit a recording of their own performance in a speech, presentation, micro-teaching session, model job interview, artistic performance, etc. and receive peer feedback on that work. Instructors can provide different levels of guidance in how students should provide feedback and feedback can be anonymous. PlayPosit communicates with the Moodle Gradebook through a “completion” grade just for uploading a video and giving comments OR through a graded assignment in which the instructor gives students comments and/or feedback via an embedded rubric.

• PlayPosit Peer Review Instructor Set Up in Moodle at NC State
• Grading a PlayPosit Peer Review in Moodle at NC State: Instructors
• Completing a PlayPosit Peer Review Assignment in Moodle at NC State: Students
• PlayPosit Peer Review Guide for Instructors
• PlayPosit Peer Review Video for Instructors

Panopto is the NC State enterprise tool for recording, storing, and sharing videos and audio. Both students and instructors can record in Panopto and then share their work with others within and outside of NC State.

Instructors can add a “Panopto Student Submission” activity in a Moodle course. This will allow students to add a video from Panopto (they can record within Panopto or upload a video to Panopto). However, in the Panopto Student Submission activity type, student-submitted videos are only viewable to the instructor.

If instructors want students to view each others work and give feedback, they can create and use the “Assignment Folder” feature built into Panopto.

• Panopto Assignment Folders for Peer Feedback

Research: Books & Articles

Boyd, J. P., Dominelli, A., & Polimeni, J. (2022, January 19). Teach One, Save One: The Unlimited Power of Peer Education. Faculty Focus. Retrieved 7 February 2022, from https://www.facultyfocus.com/articles/course-design-ideas/teach-one-save-one-the-unlimited-power-of-peer-education/?st=FFWeekly%3Bsc%3DFFWeekly220121%3Butm_term%3DFFWeekly220121  

Brigati, J. R., & Swann, J. M. (2015). Facilitating improvements in laboratory report writing skills with less grading: a laboratory report peer-review process. Journal of microbiology & biology education , 16 (1), 61–68. https://journals.asm.org/doi/full/10.1128/jmbe.v16i1.884   

Hattie, J., & Clarke, S. (2018). Visible Learning: Feedback (1st ed.). Routledge. https://doi-org.prox.lib.ncsu.edu/10.4324/9780429485480  

Madland, C. & Richards, G. (2016). Enhancing Student-Student Online Interaction: Exploring the Study Buddy Peer Review Activity. International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning , 17 (3), 157–175. https://doi.org/10.19173/irrodl.v17i3.2179  

Mcleod, M., Grabill, J., & Hart-Davidson, B. (2022) Feedback and Revision: The Key Components of Powerful Writing Pedagogy. ELI Review. Retrieved 7 February 2022, from https://elireview.com/content/td/feedback/  

Nilson, L. B., & Goodson, L. A. (2018). Online teaching at its best: Merging instructional design with teaching and learning research . https://catalog.lib.ncsu.edu/catalog/NCSU4049218  

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169 Beyond “Good Job!”: How Online Peer Review Platforms Improved My Students’ Writing and Made My Life Easier

by Liza Long

“Good job!” “Nice work!” “I think you need a comma here.”

Most instructors are familiar with these types of student comments during peer review. Nearly every composition instructor uses peer review in the classroom because we know that this activity is important. Brammer and Rees note that all experienced instructors recommend peer review to new instructors, yet both students and instructors are often unhappy with both the peer review process and the results. However, composition scholars have reached consensus that “the composing process is social, and peer review is an integral part of that process” (Brammer and Reese, 72). In an online environment, promoting student engagement can be especially challenging.

What does peer review look like in your classroom? In my face to face classes, I used to put students in groups and ask them to print out multiple copies of their drafts, then use a rubric that I created to have them check their peers’ work, with a vague student-directed “workshop” style discussion after the rubrics were complete. In an online class, I used a peer review discussion board, asking students to post their drafts and complete those same instructor-created peer review templates on each other’s work. But what were my students really learning through these peer review activities? Did peer review improve their writing? How could I make peer review a transferable skill?

One challenge I face with constructing meaningful peer review is that my students come from diverse backgrounds and reach my course with dramatically different previous academic experiences. I teach at the College of Western Idaho, the largest college in our state, with more than 24,000 students. Our two-year commuter college provides education to a wide variety of learners, from traditional students seeking a lower-cost option for their general education coursework to career and technical education students who are required to complete a written communication requirement. My English 102 Rhetoric and Composition classes, capped at 26 students, typically include a diverse mix from a variety of majors: traditional learners, adult learners, English language learners, and even dual credit high school students.

In  2017, on the recommendation of my colleague Meagan Newberry, I took a risk and tried out my first online peer review platform, Eli Review. I quickly learned that online platforms play an important role in facilitating more meaningful peer review experiences while also saving time for instructors. We are now feeling a new sense of urgency about online tools because the sudden shift to online learning precipitated by the COVID-19 pandemic during the Spring 2020 term made many of us rethink our traditional approaches to instruction. Online peer review is one tool that all instructors should consider. In a study of online peer review, Hicks et al. noted online platforms can provide engaging and enriching peer review experiences, but that the way instructors frame online peer review assignments is critical to the quality of feedback that student peers provide, and that “chunking” writing assignments leads to higher-quality feedback. In this essay, I’ll share my experience with two online peer review tools and explain how the iterative and constructive process of online peer review has transformed my students’ writing while also promoting critical thinking skills that prepare them for the workplace—and saving me time in the process.

Two Peer Review Platforms: Eli Review and Peergrade

After a colleague’s enthusiastic recommendation as noted above, I began using Eli Review, an online peer review platform, in 2017 for both my online and hybrid classes. I later adopted it for face-to face classes as well, dedicating one classroom day each week to the peer review drafting and revising process. In 2019, I piloted a peer review platform called Peergrade, which is the platform I currently use. I currently use Peergrade in my English 101 Writing and Rhetoric I, English 102 Writing and Rhetoric II, and English 211 Literary Analysis (advanced writing requirement) course s. I use the peer review tool differently in each course. For English 101, where we are focusing on using sources to support arguments in academic essays, I use Peergrade as an iterative writing and feedback tool to help students learn to craft paragraphs and draft thesis statements. In English 211, I use it for a more traditional peer review, asking students to assess each other’s literary analysis essay drafts using the grading rubric. Peergrade is a major component of my English 102 course design, so I will focus on that course as I share what has worked for me.

Both Eli Review and Peergrade function in similar ways. Eli Review is available as a low-cost subscription to students and offers a stand-alone website. Students purchase the subscription at the campus bookstore or online. According to Eli Review’s website , a three month subscription to the service is $12.50 per student. I switched to Peergrade because we have an institutional license and it integrates with our LMS (Blackboard), which means that students can access the platform directly from our Blackboard class. At the College of Western Idaho, we do not currently pass the Peergrade license cost on to our students. For Peergrade, students are automatically enrolled. With Eli Review, they have to enroll in a course I create using their school email accounts. Both tools allow instructors to collect data on student engagement and performance. While I personally think that Eli Review is a slightly superior tool with a better graphical interface, data analytics, and user experience, the LMS integration and the lower cost for students made it easy to switch to Peergrade. Both platforms offer excellent client support and are responsive to instructor feedback.

Introducing the Online Peer Review Platform and Process

I introduce the online peer review platform on the first day of class. My students’ first writing task for the platform is also my first week writing assessment:

In 2-3 paragraphs, describe how much experience you have with peer review and academic writing, how you worked with peers (in pairs, groups, etc.), and how you interacted (reading essays out loud, group conversations, etc.). Describe in detail the kinds of feedback you received from your reviewers, but also the kind of feedback you gave to the people you reviewed. Did you find that the feedback you received was useful? If not, what would make feedback more useful to you as a writer?

When I am teaching hybrid or face to face classes, we respond to this prompt in class together using our college’s laptop cart, giving students the opportunity to try the online peer review platform with my support. For online classes, I provide and record a brief tutorial throughout my LMS to walk students through the submission process. This prompt gives me the opportunity to create a baseline of peer review experience and attitudes for the class. Hicks et al. note that this kind of background research into students’ experiences with and cultural assumptions about peer review is an important first step in framing high-quality peer review tasks.

In our next class session (or the next week online), I introduce the peer review process and explain how it will work in our course. Teaching students what peer review is and how they are expected to do it is an evidence based practice. For example, Brammer and Reese note that students who receive instruction in how to peer review feel more confident in their abilities and have more positive experiences with the peer review process. After discussing my students’ writing submissions and addressing any concerns they have about peer review, I ask them to share examples of where they encounter reviews in their daily lives. In fact, reviews and surveys are nearly ubiquitous. We can’t even purchase a new pen on Amazon without being asked to review our shopping experience. Students quickly generate workplace examples of peer review: for example, their work is reviewed by supervisors, or if they themselves are supervisors, they may have to review others. Through this initial discussion, students establish the “why” of peer review. They also start thinking about the “what.” Are we just looking for misplaced commas? Or are we ensuring that the meaning of the essay is clear to the reader? As instructors who have created peer review rubrics know, establishing criteria for a review is not an easy task.

Using the Peer Review Platform for Writing and Revising

Each week, my students have an assigned writing task. They complete the writing task by Sunday for face to face and hybrid courses, then complete their assigned peer reviews before our next on-ground class. In online classes, I set a midweek deadline for writing tasks and a Sunday deadline for review tasks. Both Eli Review and Peergrade allow the instructor to set parameters for reviews, including the number of reviews required, whether or not the reviews will be anonymous, and whether late work is allowed. In my classes, we decide together whether to use anonymous feedback. In peer review, students are asked to identify required traits in their peers’ essays, then evaluate the essays on defined criteria. I also ask students to provide a final comment using the “Describe-Evaluate-Suggest” model of peer feedback as explained by Eli Review here . While I do not comment on every assignment, I use some of these formative assignments to ensure that the students are on task and understand the goal of the essay we are working on. For an example of my exploratory research weekly tasks and rubrics, including a student-created essay draft rubric, see Appendix I.

Learning to rate each other’s feedback has required norming exercises. Baker has noted that one area of concern for faculty is whether students are capable of giving high quality feedback. I ask students to rate each peer’s final comment on the five-star helpfulness scale, based on how well it meets Eli Review’s “Describe/Evaluate/Suggest” model for feedback.

• Five stars = Will transform the writer’s draft: all three parts are included, are specific, and the reviewer went above and beyond.
• Three stars = Solid, helpful, specific, and includes all three pieces.
• One star = May not include any aspects of the model or be too vague to be helpful.

Initially, peer feedback scores tend to skew high. We look at anonymized examples to discuss the kinds of comments that are truly helpful. I also spotlight “feedback stars” with examples of high-quality feedback at the beginning of class when we debrief about the week’s writing and review assignments.

The bulk of my students’ course grade now comes from peer review. Rather than grading individual essay drafts, I assign 100 points to each essay’s peer review tasks. Part of the grade depends on how students rate their peers’ submissions, and another part of the grade depends on how their peers rate the quality of their feedback. Both Eli Review and Peergrade allow students to numerically assess each other’s work and each other’s feedback. As noted above, I expect that students will provide feedback that is helpful at a “three stars” level (out of five) to earn full credit for their reviews. Baker’s study of a four-week peer review process supports this approach for high-quality feedback. See Appendix 2 for a rubric and examples of student feedback.

I do not provide an evaluative grade (other than complete/incomplete) for any of my students’ essays until they submit their final portfolios at the end of the semester. One of my colleagues, Meagan Newberry, uses a similar peer review approach with a grading contract proposed by Asao Inoue in his book Antiracist Writing Assessment Ecologies . In Newberry’s class, students who complete their writing and review tasks at the expected “three star” level earn a B in the course; for an A, students must complete an additional assignment.

How Students Responded to Online Platforms

I have seen improvement in student engagement and satisfaction as I have become more familiar with these online tools. In Fall 2016, the semester before I started using online peer review platforms, only 50% (12/24) students completed the end of course survey, with 100% expressing that they were “satisfied” (17%) or “very satisfied” (83%) with the course. Their comments tended to focus more on me as an instructor and less on their own writing process. In the first semester in which I taught the course using an online peer review platform, my student evaluations were less positive: I had a 44% response rate for my end of course evaluations, and 90% of the students who completed the end-of-course survey expressed that they were “satisfied”(10%) or “very satisfied ”(81%) with the course, and 9% rating their experience as “neutral.”

In Spring 2018, after I had used online platforms for one year and refined the peer review feedback process, 60% (15/25) of my students completed the end of course survey, with 100% reporting that they were either “satisfied” (27%) or “very satisfied” (73%). Seven commenters specifically mentioned Eli Review as a reason that they enjoyed the course. In 2019, after I switched to the LMS-integrated PeerGrade platform, 67% (14/21) students completed their end of course survey, again with 100% reporting that they were “satisfied” (35%) or “very satisfied” (65%) with the course. While none of the students mentioned Peergrade in their comments, many of them commented on how their writing had improved. I think there’s a possibility that students prefer the user experience of Eli Review to Peergrade, which may account for the lower numbers of “very satisfied” students as well as the fact that the online platform was not mentioned in student comments.

Spring 2020 was a special case for all of us, and I did not have high expectations for my course evaluations. While fewer students completed their end-of-course surveys, all three of my sections finished the year strong despite the challenges of COVID-19 and moving online. In one section, 13/22 students (59%) completed the end of course survey, with 100% reporting that they were very satisfied (53%) or satisfied (46%) with the course. Honestly, given the fact that none of these students had signed up for what became an online course, I am proud of this assessment. In their final comments, students noted that they had learned the revision process and that they were proud of their final portfolios and the work they had accomplished. Not a single student complained about the move from hybrid to online in their comments.

What I Have Learned from My Students’ Online Peer Review Experiences

While I was initially hesitant to try this new tool because I was concerned about the time involved in learning a new system, using online peer review platforms has transformed the way I teach my English 102 courses. These platforms provide structure and organization to support student writing, and they foster a collaborative classroom experience in hybrid and online courses. Here are some of my top takeaways after three years of using this type of peer review:

• Using an online platform for peer review can provide engagement and accountability, allowing for more constructive feedback from classmates. When students write for an audience of their peers, they try harder. My students consistently report high levels of engagement with the course and each other. As Baker notes, “Research consistently demonstrates that engaging students in the feedback process improves the quality of students’ final submissions” (180).
• For hybrid or online classes, these platforms are especially valuable. For example, during the quick switch from hybrid to fully online courses precipitated by COVID-19 in the Spring 2020 term, our peer review platform provided continuity and a simple way for me to check that students were completing their regular assignments. Students told me that my courses felt “normal” to them, which was reassuring in a time when so many other areas of their lives were changing.
• The peer review process supports student writing because it reinforces the iterative nature of the writing process. Students break essay tasks into chunks, then incorporate these chunks into the larger essay project (Baker, Hicks et al.).
• The online peer feedback platform provides an easy way for me to give early feedback on formative assessments so that I can intervene and make writing center referrals for students who were struggling with course concepts like thesis statements, source use, or paragraph unity.
• Students learn to create their own assessment rubrics, enabling them to think more critically about their rhetorical process. This metacognition helps to reinforce the rhetorical situation for each essay that I teach (see Appendix I: Week Four Peer Review, Student Created Rubric).

Ultimately  , I have concluded based on my experiences that using the online platform’s writing and review process has led to stronger student essays with less time spent on my part Because students know that a large portion of their grade depends on their revisions, they feel free to take more creative risks with their work. They choose more difficult topics for their exploratory and persuasive essays, and they learn to embrace the idea that writing an academic essay is a process. Students have reported high levels of satisfaction with both Eli Review and Peergrade in every course where I have used these online platforms. Most importantly, these tools have saved me time as an instructor while also increasing students’ perception of my engagement. Overall, I give online peer review platforms five out of five stars.

Works Cited

Baker, Kimberly M. “Peer Review as a Strategy for Improving Students’ Writing Process.”  Active Learning in Higher Education  17.3 (2016): 179-192. https://www.hendrix.edu/uploadedFiles/Academics/Faculty_Resources/Faculty_Development_Newsletters/Peer-review-student-writing.pdf

Brammer, Charlotte, and Mary Rees. “Peer Review from the Students’ Perspective: Invaluable or Invalid?.”  Composition Studies  35.2 (2007): 71-85. https://www.uc.edu/content/dam/uc/journals/composition-studies/docs/backissues/35-2/Brammer%20and%20Rees%2035.2.pdf

Eli Review. “The Describe-Evaluate-Suggest Model of Peer Feedback.” (2016) https://elireview.com/2016/08/03/describe-evaluate-suggest/

Hicks, Catherine M., et al. “Framing Feedback: Choosing Review Environment Features that Support High Quality Peer Assessment.”  Proceedings of the 2016 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems . 2016. https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/2858036.2858195

Inoue, Asao B. Antiracist Writing Assessment Ecologies: Teaching and Assessing Writing for a Socially Just Future. Parlor Press (2015). https://wac.colostate.edu/books/perspectives/inoue/

Peergrade. “Getting Started.” https://www.peergrade.io/getting-started/

Appendix I: Exploratory Research Essay Writing Tasks and Peer Review Rubrics

Week one writing task.

Post your narrowed and focused research question for Essay One (Exploratory Research) here. Then write 2-3 paragraphs explaining why you chose this topic and what you expect to find in your research. Your instructor will provide you with feedback on this assignment.

Week One Peer Review Rubric

Trait Identification

• The research question is phrased as a single question. (Y/N)
• The research question is focused (not too broad, not too narrow) *Y/N)
• The research question is objective (does not take sides). Y/N
• The research question is appropriate for a 6-8 page college essay. Y/N Please comment on your response.

I would like to read a paper that answers this research question.

• Wow, this paper will change my life!

Please comment on any part of the research question that you think could be improved using the Describe-Evaluate-Suggest model. For example, is the question objective, or does it contain value statements (words that have positive or negative connotations)? Is the topic too broad or too narrow? If so, suggest a way to narrow or expand the topic. If you know of a good source for this question, feel free to share it! Your response must be at least 75 words in length.

Week Two Writing Task: Academic Article Summary and APA Style Reference

• Choose one academic source you plan to use for your exploratory research essay.
• Summarize the source in 5-6 sentences.
• Use at least one template from Chapters 1-3 of  They Say/I Say  in your summary.
• Include one direct quote from your source and cite the quote correctly in APA style.
• Create the APA-style full reference for your source and place it at the bottom of your paragraph.
• Check your paragraph for correct grammar, spelling, punctuation, and academic style.  

Week Two Peer Review Rubric

• The summary used an appropriate academic source (not Wikipedia or a fake news site) Y/N
• The assignment summarized the article in 5-6 sentences. Y/N
• The summary used a They Say/I Say template from Chapters 1-3. If no, please suggest one. Y/N
• The summary included a direct quote with an APA style in-text source citation. Y/N
• The summary included an APA style full reference for the source at the end of the paragraph. Y/N
• After reading the summary paragraph, I understand the main ideas of the source. Y/N
• The summary paragraph displays the conventions of academic writing, including style, grammar, and correct punctuation/spelling. Y/N

Please make sure that you include a final comment that your peer would rate as at least three stars for helpfulness here. Remember to like your peers’ feedback if you would rate it as three stars or higher.

Week Three Writing Task: Introduction (aka “Hook”)

How do you get your audience’s attention? The introductory paragraph is one of the most important parts of your essay. An effective hook catches the reader’s interest in a specific, concrete way. Look at the introductory paragraphs in the essay section of  They Say/I Say  for some examples of effective hooks.

• Outrageous statement or exaggeration:  In “Don’t Blame the Eater” (p. 241), David Zinczenko invites the audience to consider a headline suitable for a Jay Leno monologue.
• Question:  Zinczenko also uses a series of questions to get the reader’s attention. “Whatever happened to personal responsibility?” Richard Muller similarly uses the questioning technique in combination with a strong statement in “Nuclear Waste” (p. 252).
• Strong statement:  In “Hidden Intellectualism” (p. 244), Gerald Graff states, “Everyone knows some young person who is impressively ‘street smart’ but does poorly in school.”
• Anecdote:  In “The (Futile) Pursuit of the American Dream” (p. 260), Barbara Ehrenreich uses anecdote and vivid imagery to set the tone of her essay.
•  Vivid Imagery or unusual detail.  Flannery O’Connor starts off her short story “Everything that Rises Must Converge” (p. 272) with vivid imagery.

Other ways to start your essay include (with my examples):

• A quotation : In a 1965 sermon the day after nonviolent resisters faced police brutality in Selma, Alabama, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. said, “Deep down in our non-violent creed is the conviction there are some things so dear, some things so precious, some things so eternally true, that they’re worth dying for.”
• A   statistic or fact : According to the National Institute of Mental Health, one in five children under the age of 18 lives with a severe and debilitating mental disorder.

Choose at least one of these techniques to write a draft of your introductory paragraph(s) for Essay One.

• Remember that the purpose of your essay is exploratory and the tone should be objective, so some of these techniques may be more appropriate than others.
• Avoid the second person pronoun  you  in your draft (you may use first and third person pronouns).
• Your hook should end with a thesis statement that answers your research question. For an example, see Michaela Cullington’s essay , “Does Texting Affect Writing?” Her thesis statement comes at the end of paragraph three: “In fact, it seems likely that texting has no significant effect on student writing.”

Week Three Peer Review Rubric

• The introduction starts with a “hook” to catch the reader’s interest. Y/N
• The introduction avoids the second person pronoun “you.” Y/N
• The introduction is at least one paragraph in length. Y/N
• The introduction is specific and concrete. Y/N
• The introduction ends with a thesis statement that answers the research question. Y/N

This introduction makes me want to learn more about the topic.

• I cannot wait to read this essay!

This introduction uses the conventions of academic style, including good grammar, punctuation, spelling, and academic tone. Please provide a brief comment to explain your answer.

• Needs some work
• Solid style
• Wow! You’re an academic style pro!

Week Four Writing Task: Exploratory Research Paper Rough Draft

Writing task is due Sunday at 11:59 p.m. Reviews are due by Thursday before class. The final revised essay is due to Blackboard on the following Sunday at 11:59 p.m.

Note: The reviews for this assignment are not anonymous. You should have only two papers to review. I have also assigned a self-assessment for your essay, which means you will have the chance to check your own work against our class-created rubric.

Week Four Peer Review: Student-Created Rubric (Note: These differ by class)

• The essay contains an effective hook and introduction.
• The essay contains five or more sources.
• The sources used are credible.
• The paper uses APA citation style.
• In text citations are mostly correct (author, date).
• The entire essay supported the research question and answer (thesis statement).
• The essay meets the length requirements.
• The essay includes an introduction, thesis statement, and conclusion.
• The essay is objective in tone (free from bias). If no, please comment.
• The essay does not use the second person pronoun “you” (except in direct quotes).
• The paper uses They Say/I Say templates.

Evaluations

The essay taught me something new.

• I didn’t learn anything I didn’t already know
• I already knew something about this topic, but I learned something new
• I hadn’t heard anything about this topic, and I learned something new

Evaluate the essay’s grammar and punctuation

• Needs a lot of work
• Has some issues
• Mostly effective

Evaluate how informative the essay is.

• Gets persuasive or is slightly off topic
• I feel way more informed about this topic! Nice work!

The essay contains a good balance of sources and original ideas (They Say/I Say)

The paper is engaging and interesting

• I was interested but it could be better
• I was so intrigued by this paper, I reread it!

How likely are you to recommend this essay to a friend? Please explain your response.

• I could not recommend this essay to anyone
• I might recommend this essay to someone
• I would definitely recommend this essay to someone.

Appendix II: Peer Review Grading Rubric and Examples of Student Feedback

Possible Deductions for Each Week

• -5 submission score below 70%
• -5 reviewer score below 70%
• -5 for each missing review

Examples of Student Feedback

• I completely agree that many problems lurk on the internet. I also agree that parents should take the responsibility to protect their kids from harm of all kinds including those found on the internet. I like the idea of educating kids and holding them accountable with the contract.  Your Rating: One Star
• Have you thought about having the parents take turns volunteering between their classes? If enough parents participated and volunteered in the program you are suggesting, maybe they could cover most of the time slots and get a break on their fees. Also, CWI and other schools offer online and/or hybrid classes (like this one that we are in), which allow students more freedom in scheduling their school work. Maybe online classes could be part of the “plan of action” that you were talking about.  Your Rating: Three Stars
• I think everybody wants to fix this “very expensive health insurance” problem. All of us wish we could live a healthy life. I believe that without our health we can’t live happily. It would be so sad if we couldn’t see a doctor because we don’t have health insurance. What I hear you saying is that we need a universal healthcare system. Since the assignment asks us to first prove there’s a significant problem, I’m wondering which you plan to focus on? Will it be an insurance company or medical costs? It might be that both are connected, but if you focus on either one the problem of your argument will be more clear and strong. I would suggest finding evidence that convinces the reader how much the cost differences are between employer insurance and private insurance in Idaho. If you don’t have a job you don’t have insurance? You can’t get any healthcare at all? You might be able to get useful information on the website for The Idaho Department of Health and Welfare.  http://healthandwelfare.idaho.gov/Medical/tabid/61/Default.aspx Your Rating: Five Stars

Beyond “Good Job!”: How Online Peer Review Platforms Improved My Students’ Writing and Made My Life Easier Copyright © 2020 by Liza Long is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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• Writing Tips

Free Online Peer Review Template

4-minute read

• 20th February 2024

Having your writing peer-reviewed is a valuable process that can showcase the strengths and weaknesses of your document and help take it to the next level of excellence.

But sometimes it can be hard to get a quality peer review conducted. That’s why we’ve provided this free template that the person doing the review can fill in.

This post will describe what a peer review is, explain why it’s important, show you how to fill out our review template, and then provide you with another valuable option if you want to make sure all your writing is flawless.

What Is Peer Review?

Peer review is a process in which a piece of writing is evaluated by another person who possesses an aptitude in the subject the writing covers. A peer review can point out the strengths and weaknesses of a piece of writing and show the author areas that can be improved prior to submission, publication, and so on. 

Why Is Peer Review Important?

The peer review process serves as a type of quality control. The benefits of peer review include:

• Motivating the original author to conduct sound research prior to the review
• Checking the validity of any arguments or claims being made
• Providing feedback to the author on areas to improve
• Ensuring the writing is accurate and error-free

Peer Review Template

To help the reviewer conduct an organized and thorough peer review, we’ve created a free online peer review template . Here are the steps to take to fill it out.

1. Reviewer Information

Simply fill in your name, the date, and the title of the document or project being reviewed.

2. General Feedback

This area is where you provide your initial thoughts and overall impression of the document. Don’t go into too many specifics in this section; just let the author know what you thought of the document as a whole and whether it accomplished what it set out to do.

3. Specific Feedback

As the heading suggests, this section is where you go into specifics about what’s good in the document and what might need to be improved.

Start with the strengths . List the specific areas where the document excels and briefly explain why you think so.

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From there, move on to areas for improvement . Here, you’ll make a detailed list of any errors or parts of the document that could benefit from revision.

Finally, end this section with your suggestions . Based on the parts you’ve drawn attention to in the areas for improvement , provide some advice on how the author can refine these.

4. Additional Comments

This section is where you enter additional questions, comments, concerns, and so on that you weren’t able to fit into the preceding sections.

5. Summary and Recommendation

End your peer review by including a summary of the work as a whole. The summary should include all the strengths of the work and the areas that need improving. Because you’ve already written most of the information in the preceding sections, you don’t need to go into too much detail here. If the author requires a recommendation, you can include it here and state whether the document can be published, needs some revision, or requires substantial additional work. 

Criticisms Against Peer Review

Not everyone agrees that peer review is the best way to evaluate someone’s writing. Some studies have shown that documents rejected during peer review often still go on to be published or the ones approved during peer review can still contain errors.

Despite the criticisms , most people would agree that peer reviews do increase the quality of writing prior to publication. Errors made in the peer review process are no reason to abandon the whole system. When time is taken to conduct a thorough peer review with the help of the template provided above, the process is sure to improve any document.

What if I Can’t Find a Peer Reviewer?

If you’ve written something but you’re not confident in its overall quality, don’t worry. A professional proofreader can help. They can check your grammar, spelling, and punctuation; identify and correct errors; and provide you with valuable feedback to help you improve.

Great proofreaders aren’t hard to find. A simple way to do so is to visit Proofed’s online platform . You’ll get any document you submit to us returned within 24 hours.

We’ll even proofread your first 500 words for free!

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Engaging in Peer Review

There are times when we write in solitary and intend to keep our words private. However, in many cases, we use writing as a way of communicating. We send messages, present and explain ideas, share information, and make arguments. One way to improve the effectiveness of this written communication is through peer-review.

What is Peer-Review?

In the most general of terms, peer-review is the act of having another writer read what you have written and respond in terms of its effectiveness. This reader attempts to identify the writing's strengths and weaknesses, and then suggests strategies for revising it. The hope is that not only will the specific piece of writing be improved, but that future writing attempts will also be more successful. Peer-review happens with all types of writing, at any stage of the process, and with all levels of writers.

Sometimes peer-review is called a writing workshop.

What is a Writing Workshop?

Peer-review sessions are sometimes called writing workshops. For example, students in a writing class might bring a draft of some writing that they are working on to share with either a single classmate or a group, bringing as many copies of the draft as they will need. There is usually a worksheet to fill out or a set questions for each peer-review reader to answer about the piece of writing. The writer might also request that their readers pay special attention to places where he or she would like specific help. An entire class can get together after reading and responding to discuss the writing as a group, or a single writer and reader can privately discuss the response, or the response can be written and shared in that way only.

Whether peer-review happens in a classroom setting or not, there are some common guidelines to follow.

Common Guidelines for Peer-Review

While peer-review is used in multiple contexts, there are some common guidelines to follow in any peer-review situation.

If You are the Writer

If you are the writer, think of peer-review as a way to test how well your writing is working. Keep an open mind and be prepared for criticism. Even the best writers have room for improvement. Even so, it is still up to you whether or not to take the peer-review reader's advice. If more than one person reads for you, you might receive conflicting responses, but don't panic. Consider each response and decide for yourself if you should make changes and what those changes will be. Not all the advice you get will be good, but learning to make revision choices based on the response is part of becoming a better writer.

If You are the Reader

As a peer-review reader, you will have an opportunity to practice your critical reading skills while at the same time helping the writer improve their writing skills. Specifically, you will want to do as follows:

Read the draft through once

Start by reading the draft through once, beginning to end, to get a general sense of the essay as a whole. Don't write on the draft yet. Use a piece of scratch paper to make notes if needed.

Write a summary

After an initial reading, it is sometimes helpful to write a short summary. A well written essay should be easy to summarize, so if writing a summary is difficult, try to determine why and share that with the writer. Also, if your understanding of the writer's main idea(s) turns out to be different from what the writer intended, that will be a place they can focus their revision efforts.

Focus on large issues

Focus your review on the larger writing issues. For example, the misplacement of a few commas is less important than the reader's ability to understand the main point of the essay. And yet, if you do notice a recurring problem with grammar or spelling, especially to the extent that it interferes with your ability to follow the essay, make sure to mention it.

Be constructive

Be constructive with your criticisms. A comment such as "This paragraph was boring" isn't helpful. Remember, this writer is your peer, so treat him/her with the respect and care that they deserve. Explain your responses. "I liked this part" or "This section doesn't work" isn't enough. Keep in mind that you are trying to help the writer revise, so give him/her enough information to be able to understand your responses. Point to specific places that show what you mean. As much as possible, don't criticize something without also giving the writer some suggestion for a possible solution. Be specific and helpful.

Be positive

Don't focus only on the things that aren't working, but also point out the things that are.

With these common guidelines in mind, here are some specific questions that are useful when doing peer-review.

Questions to Use

When doing peer-review, there are different ways to focus a response. You can use questions that are about the qualities of an essay or the different parts of an essay.

Questions to Ask about the Qualities of an Essay

When doing a peer-review response to a piece of writing, one way to focus it is by answering a set of questions about the qualities of an essay. Such qualities would be:

Organization

• Is there a clearly stated purpose/objective?
• Are there effective transitions?
• Are the introduction and conclusion focused on the main point of the essay?
• As a reader, can you easily follow the writer's flow of ideas?
• Is each paragraph focused on a single idea?
• At any point in the essay, do you feel lost or confused?
• Do any of the ideas/paragraphs seem out of order, too early or too late to be as effective as they could?

Development and Support

• Is each main point/idea made by the writer clearly developed and explained?
• Is the support/evidence for each point/idea persuasive and appropriate?
• Is the connection between the support/evidence, main point/idea, and the overall point of the essay made clear?
• Is all evidence adequately cited?
• Are the topic and tone of the essay appropriate for the audience?
• Are the sentences and word choices varied?

Grammar and Mechanics

• Does the writer use proper grammar, punctuation, and spelling?
• Are there any issues with any of these elements that make the writing unreadable or confusing?

Revision Strategy Suggestions

• What are two or three main revision suggestions that you have for the writer?

Questions to Ask about the Parts of an Essay

When doing a peer-review response to a piece of writing, one way to focus it is by answering a set of questions about the parts of an essay. Such parts would be:

Introduction

• Is there an introduction?
• Is it effective?
• Is it concise?
• Is it interesting?
• Does the introduction give the reader a sense of the essay's objective and entice the reader to read on?
• Does it meet the objective stated in the introduction?
• Does it stay focused on this objective or are there places it strays?
• Is it organized logically?
• Is each idea thoroughly explained and supported with good evidence?
• Are there transitions and are they effective?
• Is there a conclusion?
• Does it work?

Peer-Review Online

Peer-review doesn't happen only in classrooms or in face-to-face situations. A writer can share a text with peer-review readers in the context of a Web classroom. In this context, the writer's text and the reader's response are shared electronically using file-sharing, e-mail attachments, or discussion forums/message boards.

When responding to a document in these ways, the specific method changes because the reader can't write directly on the document like they would if it were a paper copy. It is even more important in this context to make comments and suggestions clear by thoroughly explaining and citing specific examples from the text.

When working with an electronic version of a text, such as an e-mail attachment, the reader can open the document or copy/paste the text in Microsoft Word, or other word-processing software. In this way, the reader can add his or her comments, save and then send the revised document back to the writer, either through e-mail, file sharing, or posting in a discussion forum.

The reader's overall comments can be added either before or after the writer's section of text. If all the comments will be included at the end of the original text, it is still a good idea to make a note in the beginning directing the writer's attention to the end of the document. Specific comments can be inserted into appropriate places in the document, made clear by using all capital letters enclosed with parenthesis. Some word-processing software also has a highlighting feature that might be helpful.

Benefits of Peer Review

Peer-review has a reflexive benefit. Both the writer and the peer-review reader have something to gain. The writer profits from the feedback they get. In the act of reviewing, the peer-review reader further develops his/her own revision skills. Critically reading the work of another writer enables a reader to become more able to identify, diagnose, and solve some of their own writing issues.

Peer Review Worksheets

Here are a few worksheets that you can print out and use for a peer-review session.

Parts of an Essay

• My audience is:
• My purpose is:
• The main point I want to make in this text is:
• One or two things that I would appreciate your comments on are:
• After reading through the draft one time, write a summary of the text. Do you agree with the writer's assessment of the text's main idea?
• In the following sections, answer the questions that would be most helpful to the writer or that seem to address the most relevant revision concerns. Refer to specific places in their text, citing examples of what you mean. Use a separate piece of paper for your responses and comments. Also, write comments directly on the writer's draft where needed.
• Is it effective? Concise? Interesting?
• Is there a conclusion? Does it work?

Finally, what are two or three revision suggestions you have for the writer?

Qualities of an Essay

• After reading through the draft one time, write a summary of the text.
• In the following sections, answer the questions that would be most helpful to the writer or that seem to address the most relevant revision concerns. Use a separate piece of paper for your responses and comments. Also, write comments directly on the writer's draft where needed.
• Is the connection between the support/evidence, main point/idea, and the overall point of the essay made clear?Is all evidence adequately cited?

Salahub, Jill . (2007). Peer Review. Writing@CSU . Colorado State University. https://writing.colostate.edu/guides/guide.cfm?guideid=43

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Personalized Writing Help When You Need it

Unintentional plagiarism, grammar mistakes, and uncited sources  can turn what you thought was a good paper into a poor one. When you’re writing a paper the last thing you want is for your message to get lost due to incorrect punctuation or confusing sentence structure. You know that the great ideas in your head would make for a standout paper, if only you could get them written clearly on the page. If this struggle sounds familiar, you’re not alone.

Great ideas may be an essential part of high-quality writing, but they’re not the only component. Excellent papers and essays clearly express strong ideas with good grammar, proper punctuation, spot-on spelling, and thorough, careful citations. While this may sound like a lot, your teachers and professors are grading you on your skills as both a writer and a researcher, which means your assignments will require an ethical and attentive approach. Luckily, there is no shortage of available tools to help you along your way.

You could use a plagiarism checker free, though, these tools often lack grammatical support. Given the high stakes and rigorous requirements, the aid of a plagiarism checker without the needed support of a grammar checker could mean the difference between an “A” paper and a “C” or even “D” paper.

Thankfully, the EasyBib Plus plagiarism tool provides all-in-one support to cover all your bases. Our premium essay checker is convenient, easy to use, and includes access to a grammar and spell checker, plus a plagiarism checker. With a single scan, you’ll receive personalized feedback to help identify potentially missing citations and help improve your sentence structure, punctuation, grammar, and more.

Not sure if that noun is spelled correctly, or if the preposition at the end of your sentence is grammatically correct? The EasyBib Plus plagiarism tool is your one-stop shop to help check plagiarism, get grammatical suggestions, correct spelling and punctuation errors, and help create polished papers you can be proud to turn in. And, we haven’t told you the best part yet: you can try our tool free and scan your work for grammar suggestions right now!

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A Grammar Check for Peace of Mind

You know that grammar plays a significant role in your assignments. Not only does it factor into your overall grade, but without clear and precise language, your ideas can lose their impact or might even be misunderstood entirely. Still, with so many different parts of speech and rules to learn and apply, it’s not uncommon to get them mixed up and find yourself questioning your knowledge now and again:

Can you use an adverb to modify a noun? (No. You need an adjective for that.)

Well, can you use it to modify a pronoun ? (Still no.)

What do they modify, then? (Almost everything else. Fun, right?)

Ugh. (That was an interjection .)

Does this have to be so difficult? (Nope!)

Scanning your paper with the EasyBib Plus writing tool delivers more than the basic punctuation and spell check functions that come standard in word processing programs. You’ll receive immediate, targeted feedback that can help improve the sentence structure and style of your writing. Not only can this help ensure that you don’t lose points off your grade for grammatical errors such as mismatched verb tense, but it can also help to clarify your meaning and strengthen your arguments by eliminating confusing punctuation and run-on sentences that confuse readers.

Reviewing your work to correct errors and refine the flow of your writing is a critical part of the revision process for novices and novelists alike. Even the most conscientious of wordsmiths might make mistakes, such as using a conjunctive adverb in place of a coordinating conjunction or pairing a plural determiner with an uncountable word. They likely appreciate a subscription-based or free grammar check as much as a beginning writer. That’s why the EasyBib Plus writing tool is designed for all writers, from students who are still learning the fundamentals to published professionals who get paid by the word.

The EasyBib Plus writing tool provides quick, targeted feedback that you can use to help improve your writing immediately. Also, our free resource library is available 24/7, just like the rest of our tools, to help you brush up on the areas that challenge you the most (Conjunctive what? Uncountable who?) That means you can continue to sharpen your skills and improve your writing over time, which will help make finishing your next project easier.

Ready to give your paper a boost? Sign up for EasyBib Plus or scan a paper right now for a free spell check—it’s easy!Just upload or copy and paste your paper to the online grammar check tool and, in a matter of seconds, you’ll be able to receive up to 5 feedback cards so you can begin polishing your draft.

To learn more about proofreading tools, you can find more info here. Or, for more tips on grammar, punctuation, and style, check out this useful reference .

Why is Grammar So Important, Anyway?

Why is grammar important? As long as others know what you mean, does it really matter if you use proper grammar? These are age-old questions, but the answers remain unchanged. Grammar is important for many reasons:

Communication:  Communication is about more than merely listening and talking. We communicate in myriad ways: with our voices, our mannerisms, our facial expressions, our actions, and frequently, our written words. Written communication is just as important as all the other ways we broadcast our thoughts and feelings. Unlike our other communication methods, though, written communication leaves a record. While most of us relax our style when talking to or texting friends, the fact remains that more formal venues require a more formal tone. Proper spelling, grammar, and punctuation are a necessary element of professional and academic writing, so running your work through a spelling and grammar check before you submit it is an absolute must.

Clarity:  Expressing your thoughts, ideas, and opinions is an uphill battle when you communicate them with less-than-stellar punctuation, spelling, and grammar. A missing or misplaced comma, for example, can entirely change your meaning:

• Call me Ishmael = My name is Ishmael.
• Call me, Ishmael = I want Ishmael to call me.

Spelling errors can result in similarly muddled meaning:

• Her shoes perfectly complemented her dress. = Her shoes and dress go well together.
• Her shoes perfectly complimented her dress. = Her shoes can both speak and engage in flattery.

Grammar deficiencies such as a dangling modifier yield similarly confusing results:

• I saw the girl’s purple backpack in the library. = The purple backpack belonging to the girl is in the library; I saw it.
• I saw the purple girl’s backpack in the library. = You know the girl who mysteriously turned purple? I saw her backpack in the library. This week has not been easy on her.

Credibility: Establishing your credibility is critical whether you’re writing for school or business. Proving that you can reliably communicate using proper grammar is essential to establishing and maintaining the trust of your teachers, professors, readers, customers, and colleagues.

To learn even more about the importance of English grammar in writing, check here .

What Happens After I Upload My Paper?

Once you upload a paper, the EasyBib Plus grammar checker scans your text and highlights grammar issues within your document so you can see it in context. For users running a grammar check and spell check using the grammar check free tool, up to the first 5 issues are shown. For subscription subscribers, all of the areas that require your review will be highlighted once the scan is complete.

No matter which version of the tool you’re using, your feedback will include detailed explanations so you can understand why the text was flagged. Other highlighted areas will include examples of how the issues can be fixed. Some will include a detailed explanation as to why the issue was flagged. This personalized feedback allows you to make an educated decision about whether to edit your text or dismiss the suggestion, so you’re always in control of your final draft.

Subscription users also have the plagiarism checker at their disposal when scanning their papers for style and grammar suggestions. Just as with our other writing tools, when you use the tool to check plagiarism, changes are never made without your review, so you are always in the driver’s seat. You can review each highlighted area as well as the sources of matching text and will always be given a choice to either accept or ignore both citation and grammar suggestions.

Whether you are a student or a professional, the EasyBib Plus tools are powerful allies that can help you improve your paper, establish credibility as a writer, and maintain an ethical writing process.

Try our checker free for 3 days to see what you think*. Trust us; you’ll wonder how you got along so far without it!

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Check for Unintentional Plagiarism

Persistent use of the best grammar checker and spell checker you can find will help to shape up the style and substance of your composition. However, to ensure the integrity of your work and root out unintentional instances of academic dishonesty, you’ll also need to incorporate a subscription-based or free plagiarism checker for students.

The ability to scan your paper and check plagiarism and grammar before submitting your work is an invaluable tool for students. It’s so valuable, in fact, that students are not the only ones who consistently use this type of software.

Many teachers and professors use a service to ensure that student papers are original and include properly formatted and sourced citations for all reference materials. For some, this may be a consistent element of their grading process, while others may utilize one only when they feel there is a reason to do so.

What Exactly Does a Plagiarism Checker Do?

If you’ve used an online plagiarism checker before, you may be familiar with the process that these tools employ. For those who have never used one, it can be helpful to understand how these tools work and what you should expect as a result of using one.

The most basic free tools will scan your paper and provide you with a percentage that indicates how much of your work is original. This feature can be useful to a point, as some instructors and institutions set a percentage for the amount of similar text that is considered acceptable. This policy does not mean that they are lenient about academic dishonesty but, instead, that they recognize that similar or even matching word choice is not always an indicator of copying.

However, some schools do not tolerate any form of incremental plagiarism, period. In these institutions, “check paper for plagiarism” is likely a standard action when grading all papers.

With a free plagiarism checker, the percentage of word-for-word plagiarism in your text may be the only feedback you receive. Moreover, some of these providers may wade in unethical waters, and offer essay writing services in conjunction with their checking services. This is why many students and teachers prefer subscription-based checkers that focus on integrity, such as the EasyBib writing tools.

With our premium tools, you get more than just supporting proof that your paper is original and in your own words. Your writing is scanned for potentially matching text and areas that needs your attention is highlighted. We’ll provide you with the source of the matching text so you can review it and decide how to proceed. If you agree that a citation is needed, our citation tools and resources will provide you with the information you need to help format and insert the new sources in your text as well as your works cited page.

How Does the EasyBib Plus Online Plagiarism Checker Work?

The EasyBib Plus writing tool provides an all-in-one spell check, grammar review, and plagiarism checker that not only helps you with the paper you’re writing now but enables you to gain new knowledge and improve your writing for the future, too.

Our essay checker searches online for phrases, sentences, or passages that are similar to those in your paper. If it returns matching text, this may indicate that you have passages that are missing citations.

Just as with many checkers, our tool will tell you how many instances of matching text it finds in your paper. Our plagiarism tool is designed to do more than most free tools, however.

When a portion of your paper is flagged for review, we provide you with the source that it matches. As with our online spell check tool, you have the power to review each area and choose how to proceed. If you decide to cite the flagged text, you can review the suggested source and access our citation tools to help create a proper citation and start building a bibliography for your paper. Or, you may determine that no citation is needed, in which case it’s simple to dismiss the suggestion and continue to the next section.

If you’re unsure about how to proceed, our library of resources can help you learn more and make an educated decision. In this way, you gain more than just the ability to correct your work; over time, you can learn how to avoid plagiarism altogether.

Reasons Your Teacher May Run Your Paper Through a Plagiarism Detector

As stated previously, your teachers and professors grade papers with a fixed process that includes “check paper for plagiarism” as a standard, across-the-board action. Others may check for plagiarism only when they feel there is cause to do so. There are a few red flags that may stand out to them while reviewing a paper that would lead to their running a plagiarism check, including:

Style/Voice:  Most teachers are familiar with the style and voice that you use in your writing. While most will hope that the feedback they provide when grading your work will help you to improve problem areas over time, a paper or essay that has a dramatically different style or voice than the work you’ve previously submitted can be a red flag.

Inconsistency:  Changes in the font, font size, formality, formatting, and more may indicate that portions of a paper have been copied and pasted. If these inconsistent passages are not presented as quotations or don’t include citations, this may further indicate to your teacher that there’s plagiarism in the paper.

Old References:  Part of a well-researched paper is verifying the legitimacy and relevance of your sources. While some older references may be acceptable depending on the topic, if all of your sources are outdated, it may lead your teacher to believe that you’ve recycled your own work or someone else’s.

Looking for a checker to try? With EasyBib Plus you get unlimited checks to give you peace of mind when turning in your papers!

What is Plagiarism?

If you’re looking for a free online plagiarism checker , you’re already aware that it’s not something you want to be found in your papers. However, you may still be wondering: what does plagiarism mean? It’s a reasonable question and one that merits exploring. After all, some of the actions and circumstances that fall within the plagiarism definition come as a surprise to those who only learn that they’ve committed them after it’s too late.

So what is plagiarism? To define plagiarism in the most basic sense, you might say that it is taking someone else’s ideas and words and passing them off as your own.

If your goal is avoiding plagiarism entirely, you’ll need to go beyond the basics to thoroughly define plagiarism, recognize it, and keep clear of it. Some examples of plagiarism that students find surprising include forgotten citations, poor paraphrasing, and re-submitting your own work in whole or in part for more than one assignment. This useful article provides more help in recognizing and understanding the different forms that academic dishonesty can take.

Of course, using your own words and ideas does not count as plagiarism, nor does using common knowledge . Basically, common knowledge is information that is well known by the average person. Examples of common knowledge:

• there are 12 months in a year
• the freezing point of Celsius is zero degrees
• Socrates was a Greek philosopher

So should you only include your original thoughts and common knowledge in your papers? Of course not! Research-based assignments are meant to demonstrate your skills as a researcher, after all, as well as your ability to build upon the work of others to formulate new ideas. To avoid accidentally committing an act that falls within the plagiarism definition when you’re using another person’s words or ideas, though, you need to give them proper credit. This means you’ll need to clearly identify direct quotations or properly paraphrase them when including them in your paper.

Regardless of your approach, you’ll also need to cite your sources according to the style your professor specifies. Generally, you will use MLA format for the arts and humanities and APA format for the sciences, but it’s always best to check with your instructor when you’re unsure.

If you know what style to use but still aren’t sure how to create your citations, don’t fret! Our library of resources includes free guides to help you learn about various styles so you can properly structure and place them. And our premium tools not only help you check grammar, spelling, and originality in your papers, but subscribers also enjoy access to our citation creation tools!

What are the Different Types of Plagiarism?

In addition to the question “what is plagiarism,” you may also be wondering, “why do students plagiarize?” While some students do intentionally plagiarize because they believe they can pass off someone else’s work as their own to avoid spending time on their assignments, many others do so accidentally. They may not understand how broad the plagiarism definition is or they haven’t learned how to research and cite their sources properly. That is why it is vital to recognize plagiarism in all of its forms if you wish to ensure the integrity of your work.

Examples of plagiarism & How to prevent it

Direct plagiarism:

Intentionally copying another person’s work without including a citation that gives credit to the source. When most students are asked to identify potential plagiarism examples and behaviors, this direct and deliberate act is what they think of first.

• Prevention: If you use an idea or quote from another source, cite it in the text. Make it clear that it was not your own words. 

Incremental plagiarism:

Copying parts of another person’s work, such as phrases, sentences, or paragraphs without crediting the source. When deciding which tools to use to check a paper for plagiarism , instructors often seek out those that will identify incremental forms as well as instances of direct copying and similar phrasing.

• Prevention : Decide to either directly quote the phrases or sentences you want to use, or write a good paraphrase. In both cases, be sure to add a citation. Using a plagiarism checker could also help you identify problematic passages.

Self-plagiarism:

Academic self-plagiarism occurs when a student submits the same paper or parts of a paper for more than one assignment. When your instructors are grading your papers, they’re assessing your research and writing skills in the present. When you submit work that you completed in the past, they are both unable to evaluate your current skills and unaware that you haven’t completed the assignment.

• Prevention: Write a new paper for each assignment you’re assigned. If you feel strongly that your past work could enhance your new paper, speak to your instructor and ask for permission first.

Misleading citations:

Including a citation for a quote or idea that misrepresents the source material. This can occur if a student does not understand the reference they are citing; if a student includes a citation for a disreputable source; or the source material simply does not align with the idea or argument that the student has attributed to it.

• Prevention: Carefully review your assignment to understand it. As you research, take the time to evaluate each source notes . Remember, it’s better to have quality citations over an abundance of citations.

Invented sources:

If a reference in a student’s bibliography is found not to exist, it is considered an invented source. This may occur if a student couldn’t find a reputable source to back their argument, or if they needed to include additional references to meet the requirements of the assignment and chose to take an unethical shortcut rather than completing the required amount of research. No matter the reason, this behavior ultimately hurts them in the long run. Not only will they fail to gain the experience they need to conduct research in the future properly, but they’ll also experience significant consequences if they’re caught.

• Prevention: Set aside time to do proper research so you can find enough sources. Start creating a list of sources as you’re researching and take good notes. This will help you keep track of your sources so none are forgotten. If you do end up forgetting where a quote came from, a paper checker could help you pinpoint the original source. 

Patchwriting/Spinning:

Patchwriting is often confused with paraphrasing, but there’s a significant difference. When you paraphrase, you demonstrate that you understand the topic well enough to restate it in your own words. When you patchwrite or spin, it is more akin to a word-swapping game; there’s no need to understand the subject, merely to have access to a thesaurus so you can substitute enough synonyms to mask the source material. This can be intentional, but it may also be a result of having a poor understanding of how to paraphrase.

• Prevention: Using your own words, write down the key points of the phrase or idea, and put them together in a sentence. Be sure to include a citation as well. 

A good way to test if you’re patchwriting or paraphrasing is to remove your sources from view. If you can write about what you’ve read without looking at the source material, you likely understand it well enough to paraphrase it. If you have to review the source material with each new sentence or consult a thesaurus while writing about it (except when you’re adding direct quotations), you may be spinning your sources instead of paraphrasing them.

Academic Integrity Policies and Statements

If you’re still uncertain about what counts as plagiarism, look for your school’s/ organization’s policies on academic integrity and plagiarism. The policies of academic institutions usually cover what is considered plagiarism, the consequences of committing it, and how to avoid it. One great example is Purdue University’s Academic Integrity statement .

What are the Consequences of Plagiarism?

No matter the setting, plagiarism is not taken lightly, and the consequences can be significant. For a good reason, too! Whether in an academic or professional setting, the plagiarism consequences reflect the seriousness of the act, which is ultimately a form of theft that hurts everyone involved.

Just as with the theft of a tangible object, there can be legal punishments for plagiarism. It is, after all, a form of copyright infringement in many instances. A quick search for plagiarism articles will reveal that professional instances of intellectual theft have resulted in civil lawsuits and can even be criminally prosecuted under rare circumstances. In addition to the possible legal consequences, professionals may lose their jobs or have to start over in a new field after their acts of fraud are uncovered.

As a student, you’re likely to wonder what happens if you plagiarize in college or high school. While there will almost always be consequences for this behavior, there is no one-size-fits-all plagiarism sentence. Depending on the circumstances, academic dishonesty could result in outcomes such as:

• You might get a zero for the assignment in which the infringement occurred.
• You may receive a failing grade for the class. If it is a required course, this could leave you without enough credits to move on to the next level until you can repeat it and, in some instances, postpone graduation.
• You may be expelled from your school or university.

The academic dishonesty may be noted on your transcript, which can lead to you not getting into your preferred college, graduate school, or Ph.D. program in the future.

Nobody wants to be known as a fraud or to have a reputation for dishonesty follow them through their career. And, given the consequences that can extend beyond just their reputation, it’s no wonder that professional and academic writers who wish to avoid them take the time to understand the complete definition of plagiarism and run their work through a plagiarism checker before sending it out into the world.

Even the vigilant can fall prey to inferior tools, unfortunately. Before selecting a plagiarism checker, you should understand how they work and what they can (and cannot) detect.

How We Check for Plagiarism

When exploring how to check for plagiarism, most students and professionals conclude that including a checking tool in their revision process is not only helpful but necessary. When you consider the Herculean task of checking each line of your paper against the text of each of your resources, the benefits of a checker are clear. Moreover, this manual approach would only alert you to matching text in the sources you’re aware of, after all, and leaves the sources you haven’t reviewed untouched.

But, hang on. Why would sources you haven’t reviewed factor into your review? The answer to this lies in the plagiarism definition you learned above. What is plagiarism? It’s presenting someone else’s work or ideas as your own, intentionally or otherwise. It is not uncommon to uncover an idea while you’re researching a topic and later misremember it as your own. This might even occur years after you originally came across it.

You might wonder: how can plagiarism be avoided if you have to account for the source of every thought you include in your work? A few exceptions minimize the scope of this. Common knowledge about your topic does not need to be supported by a citation, nor does knowledge that you gained through your personal experience. Using a subscription-based or free plagiarism checker will help you locate any passages that may fall into these categories so you can review them and decide for yourself whether a citation is needed.

EasyBib Plus writing tools provide easy, convenient, and reliable support to help you find potentially missed citations and can help you improve your paper into a high-quality paper with integrity. Simply upload your paper, select the checker, then sit back and relax as the site scans your document. In mere moments, we’ll search the web for passages of similar text and highlight duplicate content for your review.

Regardless of the tools you use to help you revise and polish your work, it’s ultimately your responsibility to ensure that you’re writing and submitting ethical work. That’s why our tools go beyond the basics and require your participation. The tool never automatically makes changes to your paper, but only flags sections that may need your attention and provides you with the matching source so you can to make an educated decision.

If you find that a citation is needed, our citation tools can help you create properly formatted citations and develop a complete bibliography. And, if you review the passage and determine that the match is coincidental, you can dismiss the alert and move on to the next.

Seamless Citation Creation

Professional writers and students alike can find creating citations incredibly confusing. Nevertheless, they are an integral part of a well-written and researched paper and a requirement in almost all academic settings. But, have you ever wondered why they are so important? Citations really do have a purpose—other than driving us crazy— that make it necessary always to cite our sources.

We cite our sources for a few important reasons:

We need to give credit where credit is due. When you use a quote from someone else’s work, you need to give credit for using their words and ideas. Research is often based on the works and ideas of others. However, to include the words and ideas of another without giving them proper credit is to plagiarize, even if the act was unintentional.

In addition, showing that you’ve done proper research by including in text & parenthetical citations and a comprehensive list of sources to back up your arguments gives your work a layer of credibility that can help you earn the trust of your reader or teacher.

Readers can find the sources you used.  When you’re writing high school or undergraduate papers, your only readers may be your instructors and peers. However, including citations at every level of writing helps to ensure that anyone who reads your work can access your sources to check their accuracy, learn more about your topic, and further their own research.

Sources can take your research and learning to the next level, too. When you are conducting research on a topic, checking the works cited or annotated bibliographies prepared by your sources can lead you down new avenues in your research to further develop your ideas and help you write your papers.

Correctly utilizing citations gives strength to your thoughts and opinions. Understanding the value of citations does not, unfortunately, make them any easier to create. We know how confusing it can be, but don’t throw in the towel on learning how to cite websites in MLA , create your APA citation website references, or format your works cited —this is where we come in!

While a free online plagiarism detector may tell you how much of your work is unoriginal and may even identify the passages that meet their plagiarize definition, a premium EasyBib Plus plagiarism checker account also gives you access to our powerful citation resources and generator so you can:

Scan your papers with the plagiarism tool to check for plagiarism-free work before you submit.

Review flagged passages to determine if they meet the plagiarism definition and create unlimited citations in APA format and MLA format for anything fitting the plagiarism meaning. Need more styles ? Check out our regular citation generator for thousands of choices and free resources to help you learn how to create an APA parenthetical citation , APA book citation , APA works cited , and so much more!

Build a full bibliography for your paper right along with your parenthetical or in-text citations, which can save you hours of work along the way compared to manually creating and formatting them.

How Else Do We Help You Improve Your Paper?

The EasyBib Plus plagiarism detector helps you check your content or paper for text that may be missing a citation—which may fall within the definition of plagiarism—to help ensure you don’t accidentally plagiarize. It also includes grammar check and spelling check tools to help identify errors and suggest grammatical tweaks that could help to elevate the level of your writing.

Running a plagiarism check couldn’t be easier! Just upload your paper to the online proofreader, and in a few moments we’ll have your writing and citing suggestions. And, there’s no need to worry about your paper after it’s been scanned.

Run a Grammar and Spell Check for Free!

There’s no denying that your schoolwork can be challenging at times, and your assignments can lead to some late nights even when you’ve started them early. The last thing you want is to submit assignments that don’t reflect your best effort, but it can occasionally be quite the juggling act to get everything done on time.

Why not let our plagiarism checker free up space on your calendar by helping you revise your papers quickly and efficiently? The EasyBib Plus paper checker is your one-stop shop to check for plagiarism, create citations, spot spelling mistakes, and receive feedback on your grammar and style.

When you proofread and do a manual spelling check on work that you’ve written, you’re more likely to overlook mistakes. This is even more likely if you’re pressed for time or trying to complete several different assignments at once. There are tricks to help minimize this, such as reading your work aloud to identify poor grammar or reading each sentence backward to find spelling errors. When time is of the essence, though, these solutions aren’t the most convenient or useful options. That’s why many students seek the assistance of online tools that will run a grammar and plagiarism check on their work.

Are you asking yourself, “ How do I check my grammar online ?” We’ve got the perfect checker for you! Our advanced tools help you find and correct grammar, spelling, and punctuation mistakes. Our targeted feedback and free writing and citing resources help you learn as you go to improve your writing over time.

The best part? You can use our grammar and writing tools any time of the day, any day of the year for! Looking to try it? Just upload or copy and paste your text into our online proofreader for a free grammar check with up to 5 suggestions, or sign up for EasyBib Plus today! EasyBib Plus gives you use of the plagiarism checker and unlimited access to suggestions that can help improve your spelling, sentence structure, punctuation, writing style, and grammar.

Published February 3, 2019. Updated April 9, 2020.

Written and edited by Michele Kirschenbaum and Melissa DeVrieze Meyer . Michele is a school library media specialist and the in-house librarian at EasyBib. You can find her here on Twitter. Melissa is a professional writer and editor based in New Jersey. She writes for academic brands and independent publishers about writing, grammar, and literature, and creates study and curriculum materials for ESL learners. You can find her on Twitter .

Visit our EasyBib Twitter feed to discover more citing tips, fun grammar facts, and the latest product updates.

Essay Editing Service

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• College Essay Editing & Coaching

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College Essay Editing Services

Our college essay editing package.

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Scribbr & academic integrity

Scribbr is committed to protecting academic integrity. Our proofreading service, our AI writing tools ( plagiarism checker , paraphrasing tool , grammar checker , summarizer,  Citation Generator ) as well as our free Knowledge Base content are designed to help students produce quality academic papers.

We make every effort to prevent our software from being used for fraudulent or manipulative purposes.

Your questions, answered.

We know that waiting for feedback can be nerve-racking. If you select our faster deadline option, you’ll hear from your personal statement editor in 12 hours or less – including on weekends and holidays. 

We never engage in rewriting or adding text at Scribbr. Our personal statement editors will make grammatical corrections and leave suggestions using Word’s track changes and commenting feature. However, we always make sure that your perspective and voice remain front and center in your essay.

We know that waiting for feedback can be nerve-racking. If you select our faster deadline option, you’ll hear from your college essay coach in 12 hours or less – including on weekends and holidays.

Yes. All our college essay coaches are subject-matter experts and can help you make decisions regarding the content of your essay. Your coach will help you make a strong case for your admission.

Our essay coaches will provide feedback on…

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If you have any questions, feel free to email [email protected].

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Choose from three options

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With this option, we’ll focus on improving your essay in a way that requires little additional work from you. We’ll provide you with targeted suggestions for how to refine your essay’s structure and narrative, but we will work within your current structure and topic. While you may have to make a few tweaks here and there, we’ll aim to return you a polished draft that’s ready to be submitted to your chosen colleges.

Select this option if you are fairly satisfied with your essay and don’t want to make major changes or if you have limited time to revise.

At Scribbr, we promise to make every customer 100% happy with the service we offer. Our philosophy: Your complaint is always justified – no denial, no doubts.

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What colleges look for in an essay, choosing your college essay topic, college essay format & structure.

• Peer Review Checklist

Each essay is made up of multiple parts. In order to have a strong essay each part must be logical and effective. In many cases essays will be written with a strong thesis, but the rest of the paper will be lacking; making the paper ineffective. An essay is only as strong as its weakest point.

Using a checklist to complete your review will allow you to rate each of the parts in the paper according to their strength. There are many different peer review checklists, but the one below should be helpful for your assignment.

• Is the thesis clear?
• Does the author use his or her own ideas in the thesis and argument?
• Is the significance of the problem in the paper explained? Is the significance compelling?
• Are the ideas developed logically and thoroughly?
• Does the author use ethos effectively?
• Does the author use pathos effectively?
• Are different viewpoints acknowledged?
• Are objections effectively handled?
• Does the author give adequate explanations about sources used?
• Are the sources well-integrated into the paper, or do they seem to be added in just for the sake of adding sources?
• Is the word choice specific, concrete and interesting?
• Are the sentences clear?
• Is the overall organization of the argument effective?
• Are the transitions between paragraphs smooth?
• Are there any grammatical errors?

Based on the rubric found at: Grading Rubric Template (Word)

• Authored by : J. Indigo Eriksen. Provided by : Blue Ridge Community College. License : CC BY-NC-SA: Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike
• Image of checklist. Authored by : Jurgen Appelo. Located at : https://flic.kr/p/hykfe7 . License : CC BY: Attribution
• Peer Review Checklist. Authored by : Robin Parent. Provided by : Utah State University English Department. Project : USU Open CourseWare Initiative. License : CC BY-NC-SA: Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike
• Table of Contents

Instructor Resources (Access Requires Login)

• Overview of Instructor Resources

An Overview of the Writing Process

• Introduction to the Writing Process
• Introduction to Writing
• Your Role as a Learner
• What is an Essay?
• Reading to Write
• Defining the Writing Process
• Videos: Prewriting Techniques
• Thesis Statements
• Organizing an Essay
• Creating Paragraphs
• Conclusions
• Editing and Proofreading
• Matters of Grammar, Mechanics, and Style
• Comparative Chart of Writing Strategies

Using Sources

• Quoting, Paraphrasing, and Avoiding Plagiarism
• Formatting the Works Cited Page (MLA)
• Citing Paraphrases and Summaries (APA)
• APA Citation Style, 6th edition: General Style Guidelines

Definition Essay

• Definitional Argument Essay
• How to Write a Definition Essay
• Critical Thinking
• Video: Thesis Explained
• Effective Thesis Statements
• Student Sample: Definition Essay

Narrative Essay

• Introduction to Narrative Essay
• Student Sample: Narrative Essay
• "Shooting an Elephant" by George Orwell
• "Sixty-nine Cents" by Gary Shteyngart
• Video: The Danger of a Single Story
• How to Write an Annotation
• How to Write a Summary
• Writing for Success: Narration

Illustration/Example Essay

• Introduction to Illustration/Example Essay
• "She's Your Basic L.O.L. in N.A.D" by Perri Klass
• "April & Paris" by David Sedaris
• Writing for Success: Illustration/Example
• Student Sample: Illustration/Example Essay

Compare/Contrast Essay

• Introduction to Compare/Contrast Essay
• "Disability" by Nancy Mairs
• "Friending, Ancient or Otherwise" by Alex Wright
• "A South African Storm" by Allison Howard
• Writing for Success: Compare/Contrast
• Student Sample: Compare/Contrast Essay

Cause-and-Effect Essay

• Introduction to Cause-and-Effect Essay
• "Cultural Baggage" by Barbara Ehrenreich
• "Women in Science" by K.C. Cole
• Writing for Success: Cause and Effect
• Student Sample: Cause-and-Effect Essay

Argument Essay

• Introduction to Argument Essay
• Rogerian Argument
• "The Case Against Torture," by Alisa Soloman
• "The Case for Torture" by Michael Levin
• How to Write a Summary by Paraphrasing Source Material
• Writing for Success: Argument
• Student Sample: Argument Essay
• Grammar/Mechanics Mini-lessons
• Mini-lesson: Subjects and Verbs, Irregular Verbs, Subject Verb Agreement
• Mini-lesson: Sentence Types
• Mini-lesson: Fragments I
• Mini-lesson: Run-ons and Comma Splices I
• Mini-lesson: Comma Usage
• Mini-lesson: Parallelism
• Mini-lesson: The Apostrophe
• Mini-lesson: Capital Letters
• Grammar Practice - Interactive Quizzes
• De Copia - Demonstration of the Variety of Language
• Style Exercise: Voice

Academic Writing

• Writing Guides
• Academic Writing Basics
• Essential Writing Practices for Academic Success
• Resources for Writing Consultants and Peer Tutors
• Faculty Toolkit: Embedding Peer Writing Tutorials in Undergraduate Course Assignments

Embedding Peer Writing Tutorials in Undergraduate Course Assignments

Syllabus snippets, assignment-specific tutorial guidelines template, rubric example with tutorial component, faqs for students and instructors.

• Faculty Toolkit: Embedding Writing Consultations in Graduate and Online Course Assignments

📝 Stregnthen Student Writing, One Assignment at a Time

This toolkit is designed to help faculty integrate Peer Writing Tutorials into their course assignments. By incorporating these tutorials, you can stregnthen student writing skills, promote peer learning, and improve overall assignment outcomes.

Why Embed Peer Writing Tutorials?

• 🎯 Improve assignment-specific writing quality
• 🔄 Develop revision and peer feedback skills
• 🚫 Reduce plagiarism through early intervention
• 🌍 Support diverse writing backgrounds

How It Works

• Select Assignments : Choose key writing tasks for tutorial integration
• Update Rubrics : Add "evidence of peer writing tutorial" requirement
• Guide Students : Provide clear expectations for each assignment's tutorial
• Implement : Students complete tutorial before final submission
• Assess : Use Client Report Form as evidence of completed tutorial

What's Included in the Toolkit?

• Rubric Examples with Tutorial Component
• Student Guide for Peer Writing Tutorials

Need Support?

• 👥 Book a one-on-one consultation with Tanisha Neely, Writing Consultant and Graduate Academic Success Coordinator
• 📧 Contact Academic Commons at   [email protected]  or stop by the Academic Commons Help Desk on the first floor of the Library for assistance

Student Scheduling

Direct students to book their Peer Writing Tutorials here  https://marian.mywconline.com/

Remember : Clear communication about writing expectations for each assignment is key to successful implementation!

This course incorporates Peer Writing Tutorials to stregnthen your writing skills and support your academic success. For each major writing assignment, you are required to participate in at least one Peer Writing Tutorial. These tutorials offer valuable opportunities for feedback and revision, helping you improve the quality of your work and develop essential peer review skills.

Basic Introduction to Peer Writing Tutorials

Peer Writing Tutorials can assist you with: - Brainstorming and planning your assignment - Developing your thesis or main arguments - Organizing your ideas and structuring your paper - Refining your draft and improving clarity - Polishing your final version and citing sources correctly

While one tutorial is required for each major assignment, you are strongly encouraged to utilize this resource throughout your writing process.

Peer Writing Tutorial Policy

Peer Writing Tutorial Requirement: For each major writing assignment in this course, you must complete the following steps:

1. Schedule at least one Peer Writing Tutorial through the "Peer Tutoring" schedule in WC Online 2. Attend the tutorial and actively engage in the session 3. Revise your work based on the feedback received 4. Submit your final draft along with the tutorial confirmation email

Failure to provide evidence of at least one Peer Writing Tutorial (in the form of a confirmation email) will result in a [X]% deduction from your assignment grade.

Note: While only one tutorial is required, you are strongly encouraged to schedule additional sessions as needed throughout your writing process.

Scheduling Information

To schedule a Peer Writing Tutorial:

1. Visit  https://marian.mywconline.com 2. Log in using your university credentials 3. Select the "Peer Tutoring" schedule 4. Choose an available time slot that works for you    (Book at least 48 hours before your assignment deadline) 5. Fill out the appointment form with details about your assignment and writing concerns

6. Upload your written draft and assignment instructions/rubric

Remember, you can schedule tutorials at any point in your writing process, from initial brainstorming to final polishing. Don't wait until you have a complete draft to seek support!

For questions or assistance with scheduling, contact the Academic Commons at   [email protected]  or stop by the Academic Commons Help Desk on the first floor of the Library

[Assignment Name] Peer Writing Tutorial Guidelines 📝

As part of this assignment, you are required to participate in a Peer Writing Tutorial. 👥

Tutorial Scheduling: 🗓️ Schedule your tutorial through "Peer Tutoring" in WC Online

Tutorial Focus: 🎯 During your tutorial, focus on the following aspects of your assignment: 1. [Specific aspect, e.g., thesis development] 💡 2. [Specific aspect, e.g., paragraph structure] 🏗️ 3. [Specific aspect, e.g., use of evidence] 🔍

Scheduling: ⏳ Schedule your tutorial at least 48 hours before the assignment due date

What to Bring: 🎒 - Your current draft (even if incomplete) 📄 - The assignment prompt 📝 - Any specific questions or concerns you have ❓

During the Tutorial: 🤝 - Engage actively in the discussion 💬 - Take notes on the tutor's suggestions ✏️ - Ask questions for clarification 🙋‍♂️🙋‍♀️

After the Tutorial: 🔄 - Review your notes thoroughly 👀 - Create a revision plan based on the tutor's suggestions 📊 - Implement changes in your work ✍️ - Consider scheduling a follow-up tutorial if needed 🔁

Submitting Your Work: 📨 - Include the tutorial confirmation email with your final assignment submission 📎 - Be prepared to discuss how you incorporated the feedback 🗣️

Remember: The Peer Writing Tutorial is worth [Z]% of your assignment grade. 🌟

Pro Tip: The earlier you schedule your tutorial,

Example: Essay Rubric

Note to instructors: While the rubric assesses the required tutorial, consider offering extra credit or other incentives for students who engage in multiple tutorials throughout their writing process.

For Students:

Q: How far in advance should I schedule my tutorial?

A: Schedule at least 48 hours in advance to ensure availability.

Q: What if I don't have a complete draft?

A: That's okay! Peer tutors can help at any stage of the writing process, from brainstorming to final revisions.

Q: Can I have multiple tutorials for one assignment?

A: Yes, and it's encouraged! Check with your instructor about potential extra credit for multiple tutorials.

For Instructors:

Q: How do I verify that students completed the tutorial?

A: Students should submit the tutorial confirmation email with their assignment.

Q: How can I encourage students to seek tutorials earlier in the writing process?

A: Consider offering bonus points for early or multiple tutorials, or build in checkpoints throughout the assignment timeline.

Q: What training do peer tutors receive?

A: Peer tutors undergo comprehensive training in writing center pedagogy, active listening, and providing constructive feedback.

• << Previous: Faculty Resources
• Next: Faculty Toolkit: Embedding Writing Consultations in Graduate and Online Course Assignments >>
• Last Updated: Sep 13, 2024 4:02 PM
• URL: https://libguides.marian.edu/academicwriting

• SpringerLink shop

Peer Review

The majority of manuscripts that journal editors receive are unsolicited. Some journals, however, only accept papers that they have invited. Some manuscripts will be of extremely high quality, but others papers will be borderline in terms of the scope of the journal and quality of work. With any paper submitted you will have to decide whether this is what the readers want or need and this is where peer reviewers come in.

The quality of peer reviewers is extremely important to the quality of a journal. Peer review helps to uphold the academic credibility of a journal—peer reviewers are almost like intellectual gatekeepers to the journal as they provide an objective assessment of a paper and determine if it is useful enough to be published.

The importance of peer review

Peer reviewers do several things:

• They safeguard the relevance of the work to the journal
• They advise about important earlier work that may need to be taken into account
• They check methods, statistics, sometimes correct English and verify whether the conclusions are supported by the research.

However, the final decision as to whether an article is accepted or rejected is always down to the editor.

For more introductory information on peer review, see the peer reviewer academy here .

How to find reviewers

Similar to being a member of a journal’s editorial board, being a reviewer is considered to be a prestigious position and can therefore attract unsolicited requests. Ideally, you should source your own and have a pool of referees in a database with details of their specialist areas as well as some notes (e.g. number of times they have peer reviewed articles, quality and timekeeping).

Sourcing referees is one of the most difficult tasks as an editor. Sometimes you can use editorial board members, but they might not be the most suitable and there is arguably a perceived conflict of interest in having them review for the journal they are on the editorial board for.

To find potential peer reviewers you can check the reference list of the manuscript, which is always a good starting point. You can also run searches in SpringerLink to identify who is publishing regularly and recently in that field. On Web of Science, you can rank authors by number of publications in a particular subject, so you can determine who the most prominent researchers are.

It is also equally important to try and obtain a global perspective on a paper, so when narrowing down your list of potential peer reviewers try not to have them all from the same country; the same principle that applies to forming an editorial board . This is particularly important for medical journals as burden of disease and treatment patterns vary from country to country so it often adds value having an article reviewed by international peers.

Once you have found potential referees, it is important to check for any potential conflicts of interest, which include having published with the author recently, working with the author, or being sponsored by a pharmaceutical company that is developing a competitor drug. For rare and new areas this can sometimes be problematic because it may just be one research group who is working on that particular area. However, you can try and delegate to the editorial board for suggestions if there is any potential difficulty; double-blind refereeing, where an author’s identity and that of the referee is concealed, can work well in these circumstances to avoid any potential bias. Some journals ask authors to provide a list of potential peer reviewers; however they must not be from the same institution/research group as the author and they must not have published together—this must be made clear in the instructions to authors information . Again when considering potential referees that have been suggested by an author you should always run a check on PubMed or SpringerLink to attempt to eliminate any potential conflicts of interest.

Finally, once you have the names of your potential reviewers you need to find their contact details. Most of the time, if they have published recently, their latest article might have an email address or contact telephone number in the correspondence section. However, most of the time you will need to be quite proactive at using internet searches to obtain up-to-date contact details.

How to target and invite reviewers

It is common to use 2–3 peer reviewers per manuscript. Because it is always possible that some people may not be available or able to review, it is wise to target more than is required on each occasion (e.g. have five reviewers in mind and recruit three, then if one says no you have another two potentials). It is not unheard of for editors to have to invite seven or more reviewers in order to obtain two peer reviews, especially around holiday seasons. On the other hand, editors must also be mindful that local/regional holidays should not be used as a reason to keep authors waiting. For a potential author, every day is important. It is professional practice to notify authors and reviewers in advance of upcoming holidays/office closures etc., providing them with alternative means of contact during this time wherever practically possible.

Always use reviewers appropriate to the field, perhaps doing similar research; they are more likely to find the paper relevant and interesting, and to be qualified to provide feedback on its strengths and weaknesses. You should avoid asking reviewers who are reviewing other articles for the journal and/or currently writing an article; or those that have reviewed within the last month—the more they are overloaded the less likely they will be to say yes.

When approaching referees it is good practice to invite them prior to sending the full manuscript. The communication should contain the following elements:

• Title of paper and journal
• Abstract (if applicable)
• Manuscript number
• That their opinion would be very helpful
• Are they able to referee the manuscript within the timeframe
• Is it in their area of expertise
• Do they have any conflicts of interest?
• If they can’t review then can they recommend someone else?
• Deadline for response.

If they accept, then you should send the paper with clear instructions and a referee report form.

How to develop a useful reviewer database

Ideally you should aim to have a pool of referees in a database with details of their specialist areas and up-to-date contact details, as well as some notes on quality (i.e. number of times they have peer reviewed, how reliable they are, whether they peer review within the timescale, quality of their previous review(s)).

Some reviewers will write several pages of notes and even annotate and mark up manuscripts, others will produce one line reports that don’t help the editors make a decision. It is important to have this information available when selecting appropriate reviewers.

What programs and software are available

For smaller journals with relatively few submissions, a simple system (i.e. a spreadsheet) may be adequate, but for larger journals, electronic manuscript tracking systems can help to keep track of submissions and help to develop a reviewer database. Editorial Manager , is a web-based manuscript submission and review system that lets authors submit articles directly online. Editorial Manager makes it possible for authors to submit manuscripts via the Internet, provides online peer review services and tracks manuscripts through the entire review process. It also allows editors to communicate directly with authors and reviewers. Key features include automatic conversion of authors’ submissions into PDF format as well as supporting submissions in various file formats and special characters.

Clear instructions for reviewers

After a reviewer accepts your invitation to review a manuscript, the reply should include the article or a link to Editorial Manager and a template report form. They should be encouraged to make constructive comments and the template report form should have the following components:

• Deadline by which the review is wanted by (with the option of them proposing an alternative within a reasonable timeframe)
• Whether you want the review sent by email or uploaded to Editorial Manager
• Instructions on evaluation of quality
• Is it original work
• Is it well researched? Are the methods appropriate? Are the conclusions a fair representation of the results?
• Is all relevant previous research referenced?
• Recommendations
• Accept without changes (rare)
• Accept if revised, but doesn’t need re-review
• Revisions that need re-review by reviewer

If a submitted paper’s English is considered to not be up to the standards to be sent to a busy reviewer, then it is the editor’s responsibility to communicate this to the author and suggest that the article undergoes copyediting prior to resubmission.

Setting deadlines and sending reminders

The invitation correspondence needs to clearly state the deadline by which the review should be returned by. Two to three weeks is fairly standard and, given the difficulty in sometimes finding good reviewers, they should always be given the option of negotiating an alternative return by date. Reviewers can be busy people and gentle reminders are often required to chase them up for reviews. You may wish to develop template chaser emails containing the following elements:

• Title for paper
• That they had agreed to send a review on (manuscript number and title) by (date)
• Date they had agreed
• Date it was due by
• That their opinion is important
• Are they still able to review the manuscript
• Method by which it should be sent (email, electronic submission)
• Deadline response with a reminder that if you hear nothing you will have to approach alternative reviewers.

If you still get no reply, then consider approaching alternative reviewers from your list of back up reviewers.

Decision types: What they mean and communicating them to authors

Reviewer decisions are really just recommendations and they tend to fall into the following categories:

• Accept without any revisions
• Accept but on the condition that minor revisions will be done by the author (paper doesn’t need re-review)
• Revisions required that need re-review by reviewer

The decision should not be based on a poll of how many accepts and rejects and maybes the peer-reviewers gave. As an editor, you must verify what the reviewers have suggested and make the final decision. Sometimes reviewer comments may be very superficial and occasionally inappropriate. If there are situations where there are clear differences in opinions between reviewers then options include inviting another reviewer to make a final decision, or approaching an editorial board member.

Before sending the reviewer comments to an author it is good practice to edit and/or select the most constructive and relevant comments to make it clear to the author what the decision is and what might need to be done if their article needs revising.

Decisions tend to either be that the author needs to revise the manuscript or that the manuscript is rejected. Template emails are again useful here.

Request for revision should include statements as follows:

• Your paper has now been peer reviewed and attached (or below) please find the reviewer comments
• Please consider the comments and prepare a revised version of the manuscript plus a separate file with a point-by-point response to show how the comments have been addressed
• Deadline revisions are required by.

Rejection letters are hard to write, especially in situations when an author has revised the manuscript, sometimes several times, and it is always important to show respect for the time the author has spent writing and/or revising the manuscript. The elements of a rejection letter should include:

"Your paper has now been peer reviewed and the manuscript was considered to be unsuitable for publication in (journal name) for several reasons, such as:"

• The paper requires further experimentation to be complete
• The paper is a duplication of what others have already published and adds nothing substantial to what is already known
• The results don’t support the conclusions
• References are too old.

It is important that the rejection letter contains honest and constructive feedback. Equally, it is important that authors are not given false hope that if they make some revisions to the article then they can resubmit it to your journal if this is definitely not the case.

In cases of rejection due to plagiarism, the rejection letter should follow a different format and you should refer to COPE for flowcharts and template letters.

Working with reviewers

Similar to editorial board members, the role of a reviewer is a voluntary position and it is more about the prestige and honor of being a reviewer rather than other benefits.

Reviewers can be very busy people and so it is important to not overload them with work. If you know that the same person is also writing an article for the journal or reviewing another article, or has very recently reviewed an article within the last month, it would be sensible to avoid asking them again too soon—the more they are overloaded the less likely they will be to say yes. But, much of this depends on your working relationship with them.

In terms of setting deadlines for reviews, this depends on your internal deadlines; a month may be adequate or too long. It is important to be flexible and plan well in advance, especially for holiday periods, the end of the year is usually a difficult time to recruit reviewers and you always need to have at least one or two back-up reviewers on standby to contact if you have any problems in recruiting and/or hearing back from reviewers when you are working to a tight deadline.

If you have no response from a reviewer, despite one or two chaser emails, you should go ahead and invite an alternative reviewer and let the person who was originally invited know that they are no longer required on this occasion. There are many reasons why a reviewer may not respond to your emails and it is important to be polite and sensitive in your correspondence. The email should state that you understand that they are busy; however, due to time restrictions in meeting publication deadlines, on this occasion another reviewer has been recruited.

Sometimes reviewer comments can be quite scathing, or the quality of the review might be very superficial. Occasionally reviewers might be in direct competition with the author, want more of their own publications cited or have another agenda. Furthermore, peer reviewers might feel restricted and intimidated in what they say about a manuscript as they are worried about the potential repercussions of making negative comments.

Different refereeing systems have been developed, such as double-blind refereeing, where the author and the referee identities are masked as far as possible, which contrasts with open refereeing where the referee and the author know each others identity.

Conflicts of interest can exist with reviewers and you should aim to screen much of this out before you invite a reviewer. Reviewers must therefore also be asked to state explicitly whether conflicts do or do not exist. Reviewers must not use knowledge of the work, before its publication, to further their own interests.

It is always polite to thank reviewers when they have spent the time reviewing an article. A personal email is often best and reviewers tend to be interested in what the overall decision was.

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New Delhi: It’s not every day that scientific research papers get torn apart on social media—academic exposés rarely happen there. But on 13 July, the watchdog account @spottingthespot posted over two dozen screenshots of papers, each stamped with a bold, red ‘Retracted’. All of these papers, published by the leading science journal Elsevier , carried a ‘cross mark’ confirming their retraction.

These papers had another common thread too. Regardless of the research topic—be it genetic modification or biotransformation—they all shared one co-author: Ashok Pandey, a celebrated, award-winning scientist from the Indian Institute of Toxicology Research, a branch of the government’s Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) in Lucknow.

Pandey now faces serious accusations, although he denies them all. He’s been labelled a “fraud”, “corrupt editor”, and a scientist with “zero credibility”. He also currently ranks 11th on an unofficial list of authors with the most retracted papers, according to Retraction Watch, a global database tracking academic retractions.

“He already has over 43 paper retractions. Almost all the retractions are related to fraud in the handling of manuscripts,” @spottingthespot told ThePrint, asking to remain anonymous. Since @spottingthespot’s last post, two more papers by Pandey have been retracted. His count now stands at 45.

But Pandey’s case is only the thin end of the wedge. The X user claims he has a list of over 100 Indian scientists whose work has either been retracted by top scientific journals or is under investigation.

These are not empty accusations. Over the last few years, the number of Indian researchers finding a mention on the Retraction Watch has seen a sharp spike. And many of these scientists in the global “wall of shame” are associated with prestigious government institutes.

India is now wrestling with a research fraud “crisis .” Data shows that retractions from India jumped 2.5 times between 2020 and 2022 compared to 2017 and 2019. The reasons range from plagiarism to editorial conflicts to involvement in international research papermills.

The trend has become so glaring that international watchdogs and research sleuth communities are flagging India as one of the top producers of “low-quality and fraudulent” research. In 2023, India was behind only China and the US with 2,737 retractions, according to the Retraction Watch Database.

One such case involves Abhijit Dey, an associate professor of life sciences at Kolkata’s Presidency University. He has had at least six of his papers retracted, spanning bewilderingly diverse fields such as virology, chemistry, plant biology, and pharmacology.

Colleagues point out that Dey’s “research crimes” include plagiarism, citation manipulation, and fudging images used in his papers.

“In any other country plagiarism and getting banned from publishing in an international journal would be treated as a research crime. The scientist would be suspended and an inquiry would be called,” a senior scientist at Presidency University said. “It’s only here that tainted scientists get promotions and rewards.”

Several academic watchdogs have confirmed to ThePrint that the six retractions have, in fact, opened up a Pandora’s Box, exposing Dey’s questionable research. He has been barred from publishing new research with the journal Springer , which is now investigating more of his work.

Most people don’t think much of the work we do. They think we are internet trolls who are hellbent on maligning the image of reputed scientists. But I’d like to believe we’re academic investigators. We go on for a greater cause—cleaning up academia -Achal Agrawal, founder, India Research Watchdog

Such allegations are serious, but most of these Indian scientists continue to thrive in their academic careers without facing consequences—a grim reflection of the state of India’s research ecosystem.

Scientists say the relentless pressure to publish is driving academic fraud. A lack of stringent scrutiny within academia is another contributing factor.

While the government and scientific institutions often turn a blind eye, many scientists warn that this trend be disastrous for India’s global reputation in the scientific community. They’re calling for stricter laws to combat these malpractices.

“The problem is that despite having such major allegations against these scientists, they continue to enjoy their position and perks. This is because we do not have stringent guidelines on how to deal with academic fraud,” said a senior scientist from Banaras Hindu University, tasked with investigating academic misconduct.

“Many of these scientists run in close quarters with their institutes’ administration, so it becomes convenient to turn a blind eye to such wrongdoings,” he added. “Institutes need to set up better quality control for research that comes from their scientists.”

In many of these retracted papers, the same groups of researchers either collaborate as co-authors or swap roles as authors and reviewers for each other. This network extends from countries like Israel and Turkey to China, Japan, and India.

Also Read: Indian PhDs, professors are paying to publish in real-sounding, fake journals. It’s a racket

Modus operandi

In a one-room ‘office’ across Delhi’s bustling Hauz Khas market, three PhD students are hard at work. They’re part of an international collaboration of volunteer “science detectives”, all on a mission to unearth the murky networks and nexuses behind retracted papers.

The three ‘detectives’, who are focusing their investigations on Indian scientists, pore over a board filled with photos, names, and memos about the authors of retracted papers across the globe.

Colour-coded strings crisscross between names, linking researchers that seem to be involved in the international research “papermill”. It looks like a TV show’s depiction of a murder investigation.

One of the PhD students explains that while some retractions stem from genuine mistakes, like typos or data errors, a worrying number are part of something much bigger—an international nexus of scammy scientists.

Some people just read the title ‘retraction’ and react. Elsevier has made such a false allegation on me—that I violated editorial ethical conduct—and in a very biased manner retracted these papers, impacting many authors from more than 10-12 countries Ashok Pandey, academic and author of 45 retracted papers

In many of these retracted papers, the same groups of researchers either collaborate as co-authors or swap roles as authors and reviewers for each other. This network isn’t confined to one geography; it connects scientists from countries like Israel, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, China, Japan, and India.

“If I am an author for one study, a specific scientist will be my reviewer so that the sub-standard work is cleared without any hiccups. Similarly, the next time, I will become the reviewer for the other scientist’s paper. It is an international nexus,” one of the sleuths said.

The more senior and influential scientists use their positions to commit such frauds, according to the science detectives. Editors and reviewers of international peer-reviewed journals are known to pressure young scientists to include their names as co-authors in their research to get their work published.

This, they allege, is exactly what happened with Ashok Pandey.

An Elsevier review board member told ThePrint that Pandey often added his name as a co-author after being assigned to review papers. His primary motive, they claim, was to increase his publication count and, thus, his influence in the scientific community.

At his office in Lucknow, Pandey’s showcase is lined with accolades, medals, and framed photos of him alongside top national and international dignitaries. A former Distinguished Scientist at the Centre for Innovation and Translational Research under CSIR’s Indian Institute of Toxicology Research, he points to these as the results of his “impeccable” 47-year career.

As Pandey proudly displays his achievements, his eyes briefly well up with anger and frustration, but he quickly regains his composure. The recent retractions and what calls a “witch-hunt” have been “the worst thing that’s happened” to him.

Pandey is determined to tell his side of the story.

“I have devoted 47 years of R&D experience and earned global name and fame, with many international collaborations, recognitions, and honours. I am a person who has been teaching hundreds of researchers all around the world to follow the highest standards of ethics and be of the utmost sincerity in research,” he saiid.

Pandey was associated with Bioresource Technology , an Elsevier journal, for 21 years, including 13 as its editor-in-chief since 2011 . He claims nearly all of his retractions stem from an “author-editor conflict”.

This means that the conflict occurred because he served as both co-author and reviewer on some papers, violating standard peer-review practices. While these are the only confirmed charges against him, some other papers are also under investigation.

If I am an author for one study, a specific scientist will be my reviewer so that the sub-standard work is cleared without any hiccups. Similarly, the next time, I will become the reviewer for the other scientist’s paper. It is an international nexus -PhD student and ‘science detective’

“Ideally, for any research paper, the review is conducted by anonymous reviewers. This is to ensure that there is no bias in the review process,” said BK Singh, director of the Jabalpur-based Indian Institute of Information Technology, Design and Manufacturing.

Scientists who were part of Elsevier’s review committee during Pandey’s tenure, however, allege that the “racket” ran deeper. A review board member told ThePrint that Pandey often added his name as a co-author after being assigned to review papers. His primary motive, they claim, was to increase his publication count and, by extension, his influence in the scientific community.

Further, he would allegedly pressure young researchers into adding him as a co-author in exchange for getting their work published. For many aspiring scientists, the prestige of publishing in an international peer-reviewed journal like Elsevier was too tempting to refuse.

“In most of the papers that have now been retracted, Pandey’s name was added as a co-author post-facto,” a member of Elsevier’s review board said on the condition of anonymity, adding that this cost many young scientists their credibility.

Pandey, meanwhile, firmly denied all these allegations, insisting the retractions were not for any scientific misconduct.

“Some people just read the title ‘retraction’ and react. Elsevier has made such a false allegation on me—that I violated editorial ethical conduct—and in a very biased manner retracted these papers, impacting many authors from more than 10-12 countries,” he said.

While Pandey insists these retractions are based on ‘technicalities’, the allegations against him—manipulating authors and reviewing his own research—are serious. Still, he is standing his ground.

According to him, the manuscripts were assigned to him by the journal’s manager, and that Elsevier made him a scapegoat for a “procedural mistake”. He also contends that “jealousy” over his “global name and fame” was the real motivator.

“I never yielded to do unjustified favours to anyone. I have left IITR Lucknow because I always worked there with my head held high,” he said.

Elsevier did not respond to ThePrint’s email request for comment on Pandey’s allegations.

A paper-a-day

Another Indian researcher under scrutiny for dubious, substandard work is Professor Abhijit Dey from Kolkata’s prestigious Presidency University. His CV boasts a stellar record of “finding a cure for neurological and psychological disorders, cancer and diabetes”.

But independent science journalist Leonid Schneider paints a different picture. In a 7 May article for Better Science , Schneider questioned how, at just 43, Dey has managed to publish over 500 research papers in wildly different fields.

“Dr Dey is an expert on all forms and aspects of medicine, pharmacology, plant biology, virology, chemistry, and any other topic known to science,” Schneider wrote. He also noted that Dey’s research was “basically on whatever topic his papermill could churn out”.

Quoting a data set from one of Dey’s studies, Schneider pointed out:  “Table 4 of this paper proved to have been stolen as ‘a near identical copy’ from another MDPI paper (a publisher of open-access scientific journals) by totally different set of authors.”

The allegations in this article are strongly worded and blunt, but not without a basis. Like the range of his research topics, the reasons for retraction are varied.

One of his co-authored studies, ‘Plant nutrient dynamics: a growing appreciation for the roles of micronutrients’, published in Springer in December 2023, was retracted just weeks later for plagiarism.

Scientists who have dedicated their lives to research would be able to tell you that it is next to impossible to publish 300 papers in a year. This means that (Dey) published a paper a day. Even if these were all collaborations, you can imagine the quality of research that went into these studies -Senior Presidency University professor

“The Editor-in-chief has retracted this article because it contains material that substantially overlaps with previously published articles by different authors,” the retraction note read. “In addition, some of the scientific ideas presented by the authors can be traced back to work by others that has not been appropriately acknowledged.”

The journal noted that after the study was retracted, three authors, including Dey, contested the retraction. The rest did not respond to any communication from the journal’s editor.

Springer retracted another of his studies—titled ‘Barbaloin: an amazing chemical from the “wonder plant” with multidimensional pharmacological attributes’—in April this year

According to the retraction note, the article presented a biased view of Aloe vera’s effects, repeating the same facts throughout.

“Post-publication peer review has concluded that this article does not present a balanced review of the field: research results from other publications are overinterpreted, always in the sense of a positive presentation of the effects of the Aloe vera plant, and there is repeated presentation of the same facts,” the note said.

Dey’s own social media activity only raised more eyebrows. In a now-deleted post on X, he boasted about publishing 300 papers in 2022 alone, with a cumulative impact factor  (IF) of over 1080.375.

Impact factor is a metric used to measure how often articles from a particular journal are cited and to evaluate the journal’s importance and quality. For scientists, the more research they publish in journals with a higher impact factor, the better their quality of research is considered.

But for Dey, the sheer volume of papers that he claimed credit for sparked suspicion.

@Sci_Spy, another whistleblower account on X, picked up on Dey’s post and began digging into his work. After finding back-to-back retractions of Dey’s work, Sci Spy started posting about the possibility of a larger academic papermill at play behind him.

“Dr Abhijit Dey publishes nearly one paper per day, mostly reviews. Last year, he published (nearly) 300 papers,” the account posted, adding that all have authors from the Middle East, South Asia, Brazil, and Spain. This, it concluded, was most likely a case of “author for sale”.

Dr. Abhijit Dey nearly publishes one paper per day, mostly reviews. Last year he published ~300 papers. All papers have authors from middle east, south asia, brazil and spain. @MicrobiomDigest @Thatsregrettab1 . Most likely this is a case of @author_for_sale pic.twitter.com/qppZVhsa0n — Sci_Spy (@spy_sci) April 22, 2023

Dey did not respond to ThePrint’s email and phone requests for clarifications on these retractions or allegations. His colleagues at the Presidency University in Kolkata, however, said that the sheer volume of research Dey produced yearly over the last few years should have been a red flag for the university to investigate his work.

“Scientists who have dedicated their lives to research would be able to tell you that it is next to impossible to publish 300 papers in a year. This means that he published a paper a day. Even if these were all collaborations, you can imagine the quality of research that went into these studies,” a senior Presidency University professor said.

Indian Research Watchdog often starts investigations after getting anonymous tips from suspect scientists’ colleagues or institutions. They “can smell BS from miles away,” reads their team description.

Panic to publish

The India Research Watchdog is a non-profit dedicated to exactly what its name suggests—sniffing out academic malpractice. Their team, made up of scientists, students, researchers, and analysts, scrutinises published work by Indian researchers for signs of fraud.

They often start investigations after getting anonymous tips from suspect scientists’ colleagues or institutions. Once a tip comes in, IRW’s volunteers verify the claims and raise alarms if malpractice is detected. They “can smell BS from miles away,” reads their team description.

IRW’s founder, Achal Agrawal, told ThePrint that India is facing a “research crisis” that’s no longer a smoking gun but a dumpster fire that people across the world can see through India’s position on retraction rankings.

Many of these Indian authors are associated with reputed government and private institutes like the Indian Institute of Technology, Banaras Hindu University, Aligarh Muslim University, All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), and University of Calcutta, among others.

Between 2020 and 2022, the field of engineering accounted for 48 per cent of all retractions, an increase from 36 per cent between 2017 and 2019, according to IRW.

To understand why academic fraud is rising, IRW also surveyed 364 scientists and academics last year. Around 35 per cent blamed unethical researchers themselves, while 10 per cent pointed to the minimal action from institutions when misconduct is flagged or caught.

Agrawal linked this trend to India’s intense focus on boosting its position in both national and international university rankings—such as the National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF), QS World University Rankings, and Times Higher Education Ranking—where research output is a primary parameter.

“The focus has been on research but not necessarily on the quality of research. Promotions of faculty members in institutes are linked to the number of papers they publish. So, they only concentrate on paper writing, and in the process, the quality of education is also compromised,” Agrawal said.

He highlighted another problem—the compulsory requirement for PhD students to publish papers before they can graduate. Those struggling to do so often resort to low-quality publications or predatory journals. In some cases, students simply reword existing studies, run them through plagiarism detectors, and pass them off as original research.

IRW have flagged many cases of academic fraud, but their findings rarely result in action against the offending scientists. Often, their work is met with scorn, hostility, or, worse, silence from institutes and universities.

Also Read: Inside Indian-American biochemist’s ‘haldi swindle’ that proposed spice as ‘cancer hack’

‘Science sleuthing’

The lack of stringent action against researchers engaging in academic malpractice is fanning this fire. In many countries, regulations and rules are stricter. And some governments actively support ‘scientific sleuthing’ to ensure the quality of research coming from their academic institutes.

In China, for instance, Professor M Santosh , an Indian-origin geologist at Beijing’s China University of Geosciences, caught the attention of authorities this year after the 5GH Foundation, a local non-profit, received an anonymous tip about his unusually high productivity.

Their investigation revealed that, since 2020, nearly 65 per cent of his papers—published across four Chinese journals—were tarnished by “author-editor conflict”. This exposé not only led the Chinese government to call for an investigation into Santosh’s past work but also into the operations of the journals that published his papers.

Scientific sleuths like the 5GH Foundation have been thriving in China, with many such agencies being funded by the Chinese Ministry of Science and Technology to ensure clean and quality research.

In India, however, work done by ‘academic detectives’ is going unnoticed by the government and institutes.

For Agrawal and his team at IRW, the mission to expose fraudulent research is a lonely battle.

They’ve flagged many cases of academic fraud, but their findings rarely result in action against the offending scientists. Often, their work is met with scorn, hostility, or, worse, silence from institutes and universities. Yet, they soldier on.

IRW posts its findings on platforms like PubPeer—a global forum where users discuss and critique research after publication—in an attempt to raise awareness. And Agrawal keeps getting in touch with institutions to flag suspicious studies coming from them, no matter the lukewarm response.

“Most people don’t think much of the work we do. They think we are internet trolls who are hellbent on maligning the image of reputed scientists,” he said. “But I’d like to believe we’re academic investigators. We go on for a greater cause—cleaning up academia.”

(Edited by Asavari Singh)

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