peer reviews

I was asked only recently to peer review an article that was submitted to the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication.

Just in case you wonder how something like that could look like. Here is what I sent back (slightly edited)

JCMC-Review, Thomas N. Burg

merits (how does it advance our understanding).
- General analytical model that relates the use of a specific tool/usage metaphor to aspects of computer-mediated information-, relation-, and identitymanagement.
- Differentiation of different usage scenarios

improvements:
- How can we understand „the constant reproduction (of structural dimensions – TB) in social actions“ practically, p1.
- the relation of the [...] and the individual [...] (or clusters of [...])
- with respect to p8. Isn’t [...] more about small scale networks and isn’t the power law only working if you look on the whole whereas the groupforming potential (Reed’s law) for the localized (interest-bound) networks are the important new of the [...] format.
- with respect to p 10: please elaborate on how „a manifestation of social networks“ provides social capital and how this is different when talking about [...]

the specifics and effects of the software need to be more emphasized (the code aspect). For example
- the underlying standardized structure
- the archive
- the reverse-chronological order
- the layout (often 2 columns with right-sided navigation)
- categorization
- ease of use
- availability of free (not necessarily open source software) tools

X publish with (specified) revisions