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March 30, 2012

Over at the Wiley Life Science Blog, written by the publisher's life science staff, Andrew Moore discusses writing review articles, and the importance of learning to do so early on in one's research career. "For a PhD student to write a review is certainly a good thing, but not because it's a straightforward way into the literature — rather because of a more noble aim: that of contributing novel, synthetic, insights to one's field," says Moore, editor of Wiley's BioEssays , adding that "many people in science are in it for the challenge of understanding new things; a good review … can be a masterpiece of thinking and writing that will be read (and cited) by a disproportionately large readership compared with the primary literature it contains."

Plus, Moore says, integrating existing knowledge to produce new meaning can be equally important as making new discoveries.


I agree - receiving reviewer

Submitted by phdnofuddy on Sat, 03/31/2012 - 21:07.

I agree - receiving reviewer comments back from the peer review process will help today's graduate students synthesize thought better. I've seen a downtrend in the ability of graduate students to demonstrate critical thinking skills over the last decade. Instructors certainly bear part of the blame for this trend - the popularity of ensuring that almost all students receive As or Bs in courses in college and grad school encourages mediority of thought. Peer reviewers are more often than not brutally honest and the youngest generation of sceintists needs that experience in my opinion.