Sense about Science has created a free education resource to meet the UK curriculum requirement (introduced in 2006) that secondary school children must be taught “how uncertainties in scientific knowledge and scientific ideas change over time and the role of the scientific community in validating these changes.” From the Sense about Science announcement:

“Whatever reservations have been raised since the launch of the new science curriculum, for the first time there is a space to explore how science works, what’s special about scientific information versus other information and how knowledge is generated. In the resource, leading journal editors Philip Campbell (Nature) and Andrew Sugden (Science) talk directly about peer review, the system used to decide which research is published in a scientific journal bringing it into the scientific record, sharing their every day experiences. Scientists, both as referees and researchers, give their views on peer review and there is also discussion about controversies in science – with over 1 million research papers published annually, can quality be controlled? Can fraud, like the Korean cloning scandal, be avoided?

The lesson plans cover a range of abilities from Key Stage 4 pupils (age roughly 13-16) up to A-level (age roughly 16-18). These include:

Roleplay: an exercise where pupils play the different roles of researcher, editor and reviewer, experiencing the different stages that a piece of research must pass through in order to be published.

Science in the media: a look at how science stories are reported in the news using real-life examples such as mobile phones and cancer, cloning, and the HPV vaccine. Students are encouraged to question the nature of the research behind the story, identify who carried it out and most importantly, ask whether it has been published in a peer-reviewed journal.

The process and its challenges: intended for advanced students, this exercise looks at the limitations of peer review. Students learn about real-life cases such as the scandal surrounding Korean cloning expert Hwang Woo-suk, and learn what role peer review has to play in these events.

Feel free to use the resources with your pupils or pass on the details to those who might like to use them. There is also a link on the website to leave feedback so improvements can be made over time.”

See here for the announcement of the peer-review resource.

See here for the peer-review resource and further links and information.

This is the question asked by Ai Lin Chun of Nature Nanotechnology , at the journal’s Nature Network forum.

She writes: “In the past year, a few people have ask ‘how do I referee a paper?’. It took me by surprise the first time I heard it mainly because it’s not something that has occurred to me before. It is clearly a valid question given it is not a subject taught in graduate school. Over time, we all seemed to have “learned” how to referee a paper by doing one for our supervisor(s) at some point. Should we be formally taught how to referee a paper? Or are we happy with the way things are?”

Please go to the forum to provide your comments, or do so here.

As regular readers of Peer to Peer may recall, the Nature journal’s peer-review pages include editors’ advice about what makes a good review and lists the essential and desirable criteria. Nature also runs a mentoring awards programme, the latest of which led a feature and to this editorial about good peer-review—there are several comments from readers, and, as ever, we welcome more. Last year’s peer-review debate, in which 22 authors write about various aspects of how the internet is changing or could change peer-review, also includes perspectives on this question, as does the “”https://network.nature.com/group/askthenatureeditor">Ask the Nature editor" group on Nature Network, where we have been discussing peer-review in the forums.

Two letters about Nature‘s peer-review mentoring scheme, published in the journal’s Correspondence pages earlier this month (Nature 448, 129 and 130; 2007):

Your Editorial ‘Mentors of tomorrow’ (Nature 447, 754; 2007) highlights a need to encourage ethical, honest and fair peer review by young scientists. Although I applaud the ethos of the argument presented, graduate students such as myself often suffer from anonymity in their field of research, even though our work is often at the cutting edge. A lack of publications can render a student invisible to editors and may result in missed opportunities to offer their services as referees.

I suggest that journals consider introducing a ‘PhD student peer-review pool’ to which students and their supervisors can sign up. Such a database, including a student’s name, area of research expertise and current supervisors, would provide editors with a ready supply of willing referees. Editors could try new referees in the knowledge that they will be supported during the review process by their supervisor, and could provide feedback to the student about the quality of the report.

Refereeing has often been described as a thankless task, but although it does require considerable effort, it also provides invaluable experience in critical interpretation of science. Having recently completed my first review, I believe that it has made me far more objective about my own writing and can only benefit the production of my thesis. I therefore look forward to receiving my next invitation to review.

Angelo P. Pernetta, Centre for Ecology and Hydrology, Wareham, UK

Thank you for your excellent Feature, ‘Nature’s guide for mentors’ (Nature 447, 791–797; 2007). It’s definitely one of the best things I’ve read in Nature in the 25 years I’ve been reading the journal. To better help students make informed choices about choosing a mentor, it would be enormously useful if public granting agencies such as the US National Institutes of Health would publicly post the ‘trainees’ lists that are included in training grants for every faculty member in a given PhD training programme. If this were done, students considering applying to those labs would know their actual chance of being mentored successfully

Ben Barres, Department of Neurobiology, Stanford University School of Medicine, USA

See here for earlier Peer to Peer posting containing the Editorial and comments from readers.

This is the full text of an Editorial in today’s issue of Nature (447, 754; 14 June 2007), on which we welcome your responses in the comments section to this post.

Everyone knows bad peer review when they come across it — but too few are nurturing good referees.

There is nothing more infuriating: you are an experienced scientist who has sent one of your best-ever papers to a journal, and what do you get back? A set of referees’ comments that appals you. One reviewer asserts that the work is simply uninteresting and insufficiently original. Another displays wilful bias in relating their criticisms to results by a competitor whose outlook differs radically from yours. And a third has unreasonable expectations of what should be achieved. Not only are you upset, but your student co-author is devastated.

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