PSU CS 669 Scholarship Skills, Winter 2020
One-page Summary — Peer Review

What can you usefully do in your peer review?   I suggest that you first study the grading rubric that will be used for the final version of the one-page summary paper.  It is outlined below.

1. Conciseness (18)
2. Clarity and simplicity (18)
3. Core Rules (24)
   1. Use active voice
   2. Put key ideas in lead positions
   3. Don't make unsubstantiated statements
   4. Use a consistent lexical set
   5. Define terms when first used
   6. Avoid single-sentence paragraphs
4. Mechanics (15)
5. Grammar (16)
6. Bibliography Format (4)

For each part of the rubric, can you

• find a part of the paper that satisfies the rubric? If so, draw a blue box around it and label it with the rubric number.
• find a part of the paper that violates the rubric? If so draw a red box around it, label it with the rubric number, and explain why you think it fails to measure up.

Beyond the rubric, it is often hard for an author to see the structire of their own writing through the words.  As a reviewer, you can comment on the structure of the summary. Was it organized in a way that made it the summary easy to read? Do you have suggestions for restructuring the summary? Should parts of the text be:

• Moved?
• Reorganized into bulleted lists?
• Deleted?
• Précised?
  
• Rewritten?
• Strengthened by adding additional evidence or discussion?
• Clarified by removing extraneous or irrelevant material?

List the 3 best things about the summary. Be specific: explain why you found these things useful.

Here are some other things that you might look for and comment upon.

• Good use of quotations.
• A bibliography.
• Correct spelling, punctuation, and grammar.
• Original and interesting to the reader. Does the author of the summary tell the reader what she thinks, rather than just repeating the facts?

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