Question 1

What does peer review actually do?

Accepted Answer

**Peer review** is the process by which a journal asks other researchers in a field to assess a submitted paper before publication — and understanding what it does and does not check is essential to reading science reporting sensibly.

**The process.** An author submits to a journal. An **editor** screens it for scope and basic quality, and either rejects it outright — a large proportion are rejected at this stage — or sends it to two or three **reviewers** with relevant expertise. Reviewers, working unpaid, produce a report recommending acceptance, revision or rejection. Most accepted papers go through at least one round of revision. The editor decides.

**What peer review checks:**

**Whether the methods are appropriate** for the question asked.

**Whether the conclusions follow** from the results presented.

**Whether the work engages with existing literature** and whether the claim is novel.

**Whether the statistics are defensible** and the reporting complete.

**What peer review does not do, and this is the crucial part:**

**It does not verify that the data are real.** Reviewers see what the authors report. Fabrication is generally caught later, if at all.

**It does not replicate the experiment.** Nobody repeats the work.

**It does not guarantee the finding is true.** Plenty of peer-reviewed findings have failed to replicate, which is the substance of the **replication crisis**.

**It is not consistent.** Reviewer agreement on the same paper is frequently poor.

**Variants:** **single-blind** (reviewers anonymous), **double-blind** (both), **open** (neither, reports published), and **post-publication** review.

**Preprints** — papers posted publicly before review — accelerated dramatically during the pandemic. They are not worthless, but a preprint has passed no filter at all.

**Predatory journals** publish for a fee with token or no review, which is why the mere phrase "peer-reviewed" is not sufficient.

Question 2

What is the difference between a literature review and a systematic review?

Accepted Answer

Whether the method is specified in advance and reproducible. A literature review surveys what has been written; a systematic review follows a pre-registered protocol designed to find and appraise all

Question 3

What does critical thinking actually mean in academic work?

Accepted Answer

Not criticism, and not scepticism about everything — it means evaluating the strength of a claim's support rather than reporting the claim. What tutors are actually asking for when feedback says

Question 4

What is the replication crisis, and what is being done about it?

Accepted Answer

The finding that a substantial proportion of published research findings cannot be reproduced when the studies are repeated — documented most prominently in psychology and medicine, and subsequently

Question 5

What is the difference between a conference paper and a journal article?

Accepted Answer

How they are reviewed, how quickly they appear, and how much they count — and the answer varies enormously by discipline, which is the source of most cross-field misunderstanding. Journal article.

Question 6

How do you appeal an exam grade?

Accepted Answer

Through a defined review process with strict deadlines, and it is important to understand what is actually being checked: in most systems, a review looks for marking errors, not for a different

Question 7

What does a research ethics committee actually do?

Accepted Answer

Reviews research involving people, their data or their tissue before it begins, to assess whether the risks to participants are justified and properly managed — a prior approval requirement, not a

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