Blog | HE Education Research Census

By Sin Wang Chong, the University of Edinburgh, Scotland

Part 1 of 2 – Click here for Part 2 of 2

About the HE Education Research UK Blog Series
To raise awareness of the HE Education Research Census and contribute to a conversation about HE education research in the UK, this blog series explores a wide range of issues at the forefront of education research today. It includes blogs from colleagues at all career stages, research areas and nations of the UK. Please get in touch if you too would like to contribute.

Journal peer review is not a topic unfamiliar to doctoral students and early career researchers in educational research. With the prevalence of the “publish-or-perish” culture in academia, researchers’ performance is gauged largely on the quality of publications they produce. An indicator of “quality” in publications is whether the outputs are published in international, peer-reviewed journals. In the discipline of Education, publications in journals indexed in the Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI) (i.e., journals with an Impact Factor) are highly valued by universities. Journals indexed in SSCI usually employ a rigorous peer review mechanism to ensure that published research is original and methodologically sound. To most, peer review is a process of checking the quality of manuscripts, implying a hierarchical relationship between peer reviewers and authors. Peer reviewers are often viewed as experts in the area, giving authoritative feedback to authors, who are expected to take up most, if not all, of the suggestions.

Problematising the current state of peer review in educational research journals

The conception that peer reviewers are gatekeepers of academic journals and experts raises several problems, including limiting participation of doctoral students and early career researchers in the process. First, since peer reviewers are positioned as “experts”, journals prefer to invite experienced and senior researchers who have had a well-established track record of publications in a particular substantive area or using a specific method(ology). Doctoral students and early career researchers are often an “afterthought”; sometimes, junior researchers are invited to review because the original peer reviewer becomes unavailable or in some cases, they are recommended by the original peer reviewer, who is their supervisor.

Viewing peer reviewers as gatekeepers ensures that participants in the review process are insiders, who are acculturated to and aware of the norms and practices of academic publishing. Nevertheless, doctoral students and early career researchers rarely have the chance to get hold of such tacit knowledge because journal peer review is usually not included as part of the doctoral training programme offered by universities. It is surprising to see a lot of university-based initiatives supporting academic writing (e.g., writing retreats) but not preparing doctoral students and early career researchers to navigate the journal peer review process as authors and reviewers. In Chong (2021), I observed that most peer review training resources are provided by international publishers, but they mainly focus narrowly on knowledge building (e.g., what are the stages of peer review?); there is an inadequate coverage on skills-based and community-based approaches to peer review training. In other words, rarely are doctoral students and early career researchers offered opportunities to practise what they know, including reviewing actual manuscripts and receiving feedback on the feedback they provide to the authors. In a collaborative autoethnography that I co-authored with Shannon Mason, both of us felt unsupported and unprepared when we were invited to review. We were unsure of what we should and should not comment on and the expectations from the journal (Chong & Mason, 2021); we were also perplexed about the format and structure of a peer review report (Mason & Chong, 2022). Likewise, doctoral students and early career researchers who receive feedback from reviewers for the first time may be confused by conflicting comments by different reviewers and the conventions of responding to reviewers’ comments.

Conceptualising peer reviewers as experts restricts the number of researchers that are “qualified” to be invited. As a journal editor myself, like many others, I find it increasingly difficult to find suitable peer reviewers, especially during the pandemic. It is not uncommon to send out a dozen invitations before receiving a positive response. It is a “lose-lose” situation: when we continue to reinforce the mindset that only experienced and senior researchers can be journal peer reviewers, it impedes and delays the whole process of peer review because seasoned researchers can only review so much, given their other professional commitments. At the same time, it is a loss to doctoral students and early career researchers because they are rarely given the opportunity to build their confidence in review.

Conclusion

What I am suggesting is that, while the peer reviewing model may be “tried-and-tested” to serve its gatekeeping function, it is not conducive to preparing young researchers to be active contributors and actors in the journal peer review process. Much can be done, if we think creatively and from the perspective of the next generation of educational researchers, to make our journal peer review process more inclusive – one that provides a chance for novice researchers to learn, participate, and shine. I will be discussing some suggestions in the second part of my blog post.

By Sin Wang Chong, the University of Edinburgh, Scotland

Part 1 of 2 – Click here for Part 2 of 2

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Author

Dr. Sin-Wang Chong (SFHEA) is a Senior Lecturer (Associate Professor) in Language Education at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland. Sin-Wang is Associate Editor of two international refereed journals, Innovation in Language Learning and Teaching (Taylor & Francis) and Higher Education Research & Development (Taylor & Francis). Sin-Wang serves on the governing councils of British Educational Research Association and British Association for Applied Linguistics.

Together with Shannon Mason (Nagasaki University), Sin-Wang founded Scholarly Peers, a platform for supporting doctoral students and early career researchers in journal peer review. Scholarly Peers includes a public Twitter account (@Scholarly_Peers), a website containing a podcast series and a blog, and holds regular events on journal peer review.

References

Chong, S. W. (2021). Improving peer-review by developing reviewers’ feedback literacy. Learned Publishing, 34(3), 461-467.
Chong, S. W., & Mason, S. (2021). Demystifying the process of scholarly peer-review: An autoethnographic investigation of feedback literacy of two award-winning peer reviewers. Humanities and Social Sciences Communications, 8, 266.
Mason, S., & Chong, S. W. (2022). Bringing light to a hidden genre: The peer review report. Higher Education Research & Development, Advanced online publication.

By Prof. Chris Brown

The idea of the democratic, ideas-informed, society is a concept that can be traced back to at least 375BCE and Plato’s The Republic. We can think of it as the sort of place in which citizens actively, openly and critically engage with new ideas, developments and claims to truth. The desired outcome of this engagement is a situation in which people become ever more knowledgeable, are able to make good decisions and lifestyle choices, and will re-align their values in response to new progressive beliefs and norms: in other words, re-align their values in response to beliefs, perspectives or proposals for change that seeks to improve the human condition. As a result, there are benefits which can be realised from the ideas-informed society: not just for individuals and their families, but also for communities, society more widely, as well as the natural environment at large.

Yet, despite the advantages available from doing so, there are significant cold spots in terms of the extent to which different groups and communities actively and critically engage with new ideas. For instance, recent Structural Equation Modelling, using a representative sample of 1,000 respondents in England, shows that those in communities with low levels of education, alongside a socially-narrow level of cohesion, are less likely to regard keeping up-to-date as important. Here, narrow cohesion corresponds to situations in which one’s interpersonal connections are broadly homogenous: consisting predominantly of people with similarly low levels of education and similarly employed in routine/manual jobs. The data suggest that members of such communities may not be as likely to see value in statements concerning tolerance and inclusion, the ethical and sustainable practices of businesses, or the need to support the physical and mental health of ourselves or others.

At the same time, it is these very communities that are likely to benefit most from being able to engage with new ideas, make smarter decisions and choices, and adopt more progressive beliefs and norms. So what might educational researchers do about this? Well, the structural equation model findings suggest that, in the long term, educated societies are more likely to be informed societies. This suggests teachers and teaching needs to be fully harnessed to equip future citizens with the skills, aptitudes and dispositions needed for them to actively want to keep up to date, as well as engage in debates relating to ideas, truth claims and new developments. Yet, if education is to achieve these things, then educators themselves must be able to model what is required, which necessitates them developing new traits and ways of working. Within this context, the development of relevant high quality, continuing professional learning programmes will be necessary.

But there is also space for us to think about other, meaningful, short/medium term actions. So, what might be required? The structural equation model also hints at the importance of citizens in low education/narrowly socially cohesive communities engaging in ideas-related discussions, which seemingly counters some of the issues noted above. Potentially this is because discussion is an indicator (a proxy measure) of the presence of a more positive form of relational social capital, which itself often results in the creation of certain types of human capital in others. For instance, it can help individuals build a secure sense of self-identity, have confidence in expressing opinions, and can increase emotional intelligence – all of which enables individuals to become better learners and citizens. In other words, discussion can lead to a sparking of interest in relation to new ideas, as well as building one’s ability to think about them or engage with them critically.

So, as well as improving education itself, educational researchers can explore how to improve interactive engagement by communities with ideas. For instance, by running science cafés which engage citizens with new research findings and encourage citizens to talk about how these might be usefully employed. There are no doubt other similar approaches. And to take this forward, we are currently pulling together a compilation of initiatives that have previously attempted to get communities talking – so, if you have suggestions for things we might look at, we’d love to hear from you!

Professor Chris Brown is Professor in Education and Deputy Executive Dean (Research) at Durham University, UK.

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