On Tuesday, I visited the SCU library with the rest of my critical thinking and writing class to learn about peer review and recall the process of appropriately summarizing sources. The librarian, Gail, first posed the question, “What is peer review?”
I thought to myself and recalled from a psychology course that peer reviewers were people who carefully edited the articles researchers, authors, and scientists draft. These drafts undergo long periods of time which take anywhere from a few months to years. After the editing phase, the articles are then proposed to credible journals and/or online sites. These publishers are selective as each publisher has certain criteria that an article must relate to in order to be featured.
Academic Journals Are Not Like Regular Magazines – Source
In the future, I plan on pursuing an occupation in the field of therapy or counseling psychology. Either path includes many opportunities for my own work to be published, and by now knowing of peer review, I know a little more of what to expect in my career field.
Once we established what peer review was, we transitioned to how to summarize sources. While this skill would have been valuable for the annotated bibliography paper we were assigned, I still found this lesson as a good refresher for future papers.
I Just Thought This Was Funny – Source
My partner JJ Burwell and I were tasked with summarizing a group of random science-related articles. I found that I need to improve the way I display who the authors are in each summary. I noticed how I only dig as far back as to what field of study the authors are, but I never dive into if any have outstanding credentials or previous successful pieces of work. These small details should be included because with the information the reader can fully grasp the credibility behind the author. In addition, the reader can then know exactly whose work to pursue further if it suites them.
Even if I knew generally how to summarize an article, readdressing the process never hurt. I especially benefitted from the time in the library because I altered my process of summarizing and now know a more effective and informational method.