Becoming a peer reviewer for an education research journal: peer review mentoring as a boundary crossing experience

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to analyse and articulate the practices of peer review through a peer review mentoring program initiated by a science education research journal. Academic enculturation is critical in quality education research; however, the importance of formally preparing future researchers for activities such as publishing and peer review is often overlooked by journals. Design/methodology/approach Running concurrently with the mentoring program was a collaborative self-study to examine the peer review mentoring relationship between a science doctoral candidate and an experienced researcher and journal associate editor. To understand the learning experienced by the novice researcher, the study drew on boundary crossing theory that states that the boundary represents a discontinuity and offers learning potential, which can be crossed with the support of a boundary spanner or boundary objects. Data included reflections, peer review drafts and systematically collected recordings of mentoring sessions. Findings Four themes relating to the learning from four review cycles shed light on the discontinuities experienced by this novice peer reviewer, including disagreement and/or agreement among reviews, discerning quality, stance and pedagogy of the reviewer and growth in expertise and confidence of the reviewer. Research limitations/implications The research employed self-study centred on a singular context, with one mentor and one mentee. While the scope of the study was this single case study, the detailed process described here may be useful for other contexts, such as universities and journals considering individualised support for research and doctoral students and early career researchers in understanding the reviewing process. Practical implications Based on our experiences reported here, we argue that programs based on collaboration and mindful of psychosocial aspects of learning to peer review can play an important role in developing autonomous and confident reviewers who can discern research quality, develop their own style but recognise how their personal stance/experience and what they think is important can potentially bias a review, and sustain a pedagogical stance that edifies the research community. Originality/value Distillation of the themes identifies the learning that a novice peer reviewer needs to understand. We argue that peer review mentoring programs support the identification and negotiation of discontinuities experienced by novice researchers as they are enculturated into the science education peer review community.