The importance of scholarly peer reviews

Dear Educational Researcher,

The importance of scholarly peer reviews in promoting excellence in our field of study is unquestionable—but we know very little about what kind of content reviews actually contain. This message is an invitation to you to contribute reviews you have received to an exploratory research study. My goals are to assemble a collection of reviews of papers or scholarly proposals and to analyse them to find overall themes and concerns, particularly from the perspective of research methods and methodology. This project will support the work of researchers both as creators and receivers of reviews. (Apologies for cross-posting if you have previously received this message.)

A little about me: I am conducting this study as an independent scholar in private practice. My career has been in educational research, both inside and outside academia. I previously worked at the University of Toronto for over 20 years as Head of the OISE Research Consulting Service.

You can participate in this study by sending an email message to scholarlyreviewstudy@gmail.com and attaching one or more scholarly reviews (or sets of reviews) in English or French that you have received in the past 10 years. If the reviews were not sent as an attachment, you could copy the review text into a Word file and attach it or paste it into an email. Please be assured that I will not read the review(s) until after they are removed from the message.

The data will be subject to stringent measures to ensure confidentiality. Only I will have access to the data, which will be stored on my personal password-protected computer, usually located in a private home. Reviews received will be further anonymised by stripping them of personal and institutional identification as well as information about the specific area under study. Once the text of the review is incorporated into the project database, the email message will be deleted from my personal computer and email server. I will not use any quotations from reviews. All data will be destroyed in 10 years. I will not use the data for reasons other than those identified above. Unfortunately, I am unable to guarantee confidentiality during the actual transmission of the email. However, the WIFI network I use is password-protected.

Participation in the study is completely voluntary. I do not anticipate any risks to participants. I hope that the results of the study will benefit you and other researchers when writing or receiving scholarly reviews. I assume that you have read and understood the content of this message. Submission of materials to the study email address will constitute your voluntary consent to participate in the research. If you have any questions, please contact me at selgie@sympatico.ca or at 416-531-9548. If you wish to withdraw your data (the reviews) from the study, you may do so prior to anonymisation, as it would be quite difficult subsequently.

This study has been reviewed and approved by the Community Research Ethics Office. If you feel that you have not been treated according to the descriptions in the information you received, or your rights as a participant in research have been violated during the course of this project you may contact the Chair, Community Research Ethics Board, Community Research ethics office, 647-447-9628.

In closing, I would like again to urge you to send the text(s) of one or more scholarly reviews that you have received during the past 10 years to scholarlyreviewstudy@gmail.com.

Thank you,
Susan
_____________________
Susan Elgie
Research Consultant
selgie@sympatico.ca