Peer review has been around since journals were first published. Peer review organized by journal editors is, however, relatively recent, having become popular in the mid-1900s. Prior to that time, editors decided what to publish. The change of approach has not been good for science. Mandatory journal peer review is biased against the proper scientific study of important problems. It is also unreliable, slow, expensive, and has led to the mindless publication of many incorrect and useless studies. We suggest that journal peer review should be replaced by assessment of whether a paper follows proper scientific procedures. We describe the development of checklist software to aid in this process. Using the software would reduce the time and cost of reviewing research papers and help to avoid biased reviews. We pretested the software using a convenience sample of published papers and compared preliminary findings with those from software designed to assess the conformity of advertisements with evidence-based persuasion principles. The online journal PLoS employ a criterion they call “soundness,” which is akin to assessing conformance to science, for choosing articles to publish. Since that journal was founded ten years ago, PLoS has become the world’s largest publisher of research articles. We suggest that journal editors, PhD programs, universities, law courts, and research funders including governments adopt the Conformance to Science checklist to efficiently identify research worthy of support and use, and to thereby encourage the growth of scientific knowledge.

This study describes how Korean college students perceive reviewing their peers’ drafts over the course of one semester and what variables might affect their review process. Twenty-six students enrolled in the teacher researcher’s two writing courses participated in this study. The data came from the students’ reflections on their peer reviews and the researcher’s observations/descriptions of the review process, and informal interviews with several students. The findings indicated that the students in this study valued peer reviews, but they were reluctant to write comments on peers’ drafts, especially at the beginning of the semester. However, toward the end of the semester, they felt more comfortable in providing written comments on peers’ drafts, particularly when they developed positive relationships with their peers. Suggestions for effective peer activity have also been provided.

This study examines what role English writing instructors need to play in peer revision activities. Students participating in the study were asked to go through multiple draft writing process in which they wrote three drafts on each writing assignment and review their peers’ essays in both a written comment sheet and an oral discussion. Overall, the results show that the peer comments played little role in improving the students’ essays from the first to second drafts. However, great improvement is observed from the second to final drafts. Specifically, little effect of the feedback on the improvement of non-linguistic features of the essays is identified. Regarding the linguistic features, improvement was made from the second to final drafts. However, it is achieved by both the peer and teacher comments. Therefore, it is concluded in the study that the teacher comments played a role in helping the students produce the linguistically improved final drafts. The study recommends the instructor’s explicit, detailed feedback to the errors caused from students’ insufficient writing and English competence.

While the professional literature abounds with the values of feedback on L2 language writings, few researchers have investigated the differential effects of types of feedback on the writing improvements in terms of proficiency levels. The purpose of the study was three-fold: to examine (1) the effects of three types of feedback, teacher, peer, and self-review on sixteen Korean college students" writing improvements; (2) the relationships between feedback types and proficiency levels; and (3) students" opinions on the feedback types such as preferences and reasons. The results showed that all types of feedback helped students improve their writings through revisions, but the effects of feedback differ from feedback type to type. The effects of teacher and peer review were significantly beneficial for students" writing, while the self-review was the least effective. In addition, the more advanced writers benefit from the peer or self-review, while the less proficient writers improved their writing from the teacher feedback, even though most of the students prefer the teacher feedback to the other types of feedback, peer and self-review. The theoretical background and pedagogical implications are discussed.