Umashankar Sivapathasubramaniam ACR302 Peer Review Reflection

This report details a student's experience with a peer review assignment within the ACR302 Criminology Research course at Deakin University. The student reviewed literature reviews of two team members, focusing on the research question, theoretical framework, and overall structure. The student reflects on the peer review process, highlighting the benefits of receiving and providing feedback, and how it improved their understanding of the research process. The report includes an analysis of the research papers, emphasizing the importance of clear writing, relevant information, and a well-defined research question. The student also discusses the challenges of the peer review process, such as understanding the depth of the reviewed material and the potential for negative feedback. The report concludes with a positive assessment of the peer review experience, emphasizing its contribution to improved writing skills and a better understanding of research strategies.

ACR302 - CRIMINOLOGY
RESEARCH
Literature Peer Review / Reflection

Umashankar Sivapathasubramaniam 217169741
For conducting a peer review of my team members and a review of my own literature review, I have
taken the support of secondary data collection method for collecting all the relevant information
pertaining to the topic of my research paper and both of my team members. Reviewing the
literature of my other two allocated team members was a great opportunity to experience the way
of reviewing a literature of other people as a reader or marker and get a feedback of my own
literature along with sharing my feedback to the team. However, we as a group discussed and
exchange our work through email and provided feedback within four days. We did not have any
issues while exchanging our research work via email; however, we had certain concerns regarding
sharing our literature review before the due date. I spent a few hours to review each team
member’s literature, for I had to understand the task along with the marking criteria in order to
provide feedback based on their respective topics. As a reviewer of the literature review of my team
members’ research works, I considered some of the criteria while reviewing. For instance, I
considered whether the research paper was clearly written and whether it followed the criteria of
literature review, along with the fact that whether it framed a good research question for the
proposal. I clearly identified that my team members had provided sufficient information in their
literature review.
I did not understand the details of the literatures of my team members completely as soon as I
finished reading them; it took me some time to grasp it and reach its depth. At this point I found
their research work quite interesting, which made me realise that peer reviewing my teammate’s
work would made me improve in my work as well. I believe I have provided effective feedback to my
team members pertaining to their research work along with the certain changes that they would be
required to revise. I think peer review would help me learn new things and enhance my knowledge,
as well as help me understand the importance of providing feedback to others. Peer review helps
one to incorporate the knowledge that one derives from others’ work and helps them to avoid
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Umashankar Sivapathasubramaniam 217169741
irrelevant information and words in order to avoid delivering a poor quality work. The peer review
would help me think critically about my works and others’ as well, which would help me structure
my work in a better way.
After receiving feedback from my team members, it felt great to receive such constrictive criticism
which helped me improve my grammatical and structural errors for this task and the research work
that I would do in future. I found this peer reviewing task and reflecting on my task extremely
beneficial as it helped me to improve my weakness. I have learned to taken positive steps towards
writing a research paper, along with a good structure. It has helped me to understand the way to
frame strategies better along with encouraging me to write similar tasks professionally.
In this paper, I peer reviewed both my team members Niels GESTHUIZEN and Kat GRUJIN’s literature
reviews. I was quite satisfied with the extensive work of my fellow Team members Niels
GESTHUIZEN and Kat GRUJIN, both have put the best effort that they could. The papers give out an
idea that they have done a thorough research on their area of study, leaving no stone unturned. To
my knowledge, the entire process of peer reviewing helps a researcher to get hold of different
perspective out of one particular topic; the many angles from which people could approach the
same matter is extremely fascinating. I was quite overwhelmed to receive feedback from my fellow
Team members-matches on my literature review and was appreciated for choosing such a sensitive
topic that needs a detailed discussion. Therefore, it could be argued that peer review helps to
scrutinise the work of a researcher by experts working in the same field who could check its validity
and lay down whether it is suitable for publication. However, it could be counter-argued that at
many situations, experts and researchers tend to be negative about the perspective of the
researcher of a particular journal, thus disapproving it or giving out a negative review. Therefore, I
understood that peer review carries both positive and negative aspect to it.
Team Members:
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Umashankar Sivapathasubramaniam 217169741
NO Name Student ID
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