I'm mean. Perhaps I should say, I'm overly critical.
For a conference that I attend, I'm serving as a reviewer for poster session applicants. What that means is that I am the primary reviewer for about 15 abstracts for poster presentations. I read through the abstracts, provide some written feedback, and rate them on a scale of 1 to 5. The scale is as follows:
1 - Fair
2 - Good
3 - Very Good
4 - Excellent
5 - Superstar (choose 2 or less)
You may have gathered from this scale that librarians aren't big on being critical of their colleagues. The woman who asked me to serve as a reviewer explained that she added the "2 or less" restriction because she had a problem in the past with reviewers raking every one as either a 4 or a 5 regardless of how poor or inane the submission was.
Not me.
Of my batch of abstracts, I'm not using the top ranking at all. The problem is that so many of these are just not innovative or would be better suited for an article than a poster. And I'm continually asking "so what?" So what is the impact of this project? Why should I care? What are the broader implications and/or applications?
I guess it's probably good to be critical as a reviewer, but in a profession where people just want everyone to get along, I don't think it's a very popular stance to take.
5 comments:
maybe you should be a librarian for the CIA instead of academia?? methinks they're not as...cuddly. ;)
Maybe you'd make a better judge on American Idol??...
Just a thought.
ooooh i hate you...I will soon begin working on research...research that will more than likely be presented in a poster presentation...i'll probably get a meanie like you reviewing my work ;)
Good for you!
Too many people think they can get by with substandard work. Giving top scores for poor work enables the mediocrity. :)
Have you considered doing reviews for grants? Grant reviewers tend to be very critical as well :)
I think that in a case like this, criticism is good as it helps them learn and better themselves (as long as they can TAKE the criticism. If they can't, they're probably not doing the right thing in life).
Post a Comment