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Implementing peer-to-peer learning models within an academic library environment presents several benefits and challenges. This study explores the effectiveness of integrating peer-assisted learning in research services and considers the impact on those providing support and those seeking assistance. A more comprehensive understanding of peer education approaches in research support services will benefit academic libraries interested in incorporating this model.

This article showcases case study data from the reference and instruction peer-led learning programs at California State University Fullerton's Pollak Library, incorporating library interns and student assistants trained to provide front line research support to fellow students from 2019 to 2022. Feedback was collected across the learning experience from student facilitators, patrons assisted and participating library supervisors.

Project data demonstrates that incorporating students in traditional academic library research services nurtures experiential learning and serves as an effective high-impact practice. Additionally, peer-led programs contribute to a helpful, welcoming atmosphere for library users and help connect libraries to the communities they serve.

Exploring survey data and student reflections, this combined study highlights advantages and implications of incorporating peer learning programs in research services in both formal and informal instruction environments. Results also reveal promising methods for recruitment, training and sustainable program development for libraries considering this approach.

Inclusion of members of the target population in research is an increasing priority in the social sciences; however, relatively few studies employ approaches that involve persons with lived experience of the mental health system in mental health services research, particularly in the USA. The purpose of this paper is to describe one such approach, the employment of peer interviewers in the evaluation of a peer respite program.

The paper describes how peer interviewers were recruited, hired, trained, and supervised. The authors discuss some benefits and challenges associated with the approach.

Peer interviewer benefits and challenges: the shared lived experience between the peer interviewers and study participants contributed to increased comfort and a high response rate overall. The study opened up professional opportunities for peers, but inconsistent work hours were a challenge and resulted in turnover and difficulty filling vacant positions. The lead evaluator and supervisors worked closely with peer interviewers to ensure conflict of interest was mitigated to reduce bias.

This paper adds to the limited literature describing peer representation in research, outlining one avenue for partnering with peers to align research with the values of the intervention under study without compromising – and perhaps increasing – scientific rigor. The authors expect that even more peer involvement in the oversight, analysis, and interpretation of results would have improved the overall quality of the evaluation. Future efforts should build upon and incorporate the approach alongside more comprehensive efforts to partner with service users.

This paper aims to describe both the development of a peer research consultant program – using student assistants to staff the reference desk with minimal supervision while providing high-quality research assistance to their undergraduate peers, and the steps taken to create buy-in for the program from campus and librarians.

The authors provide a description of peer reference services and describe how a remodel of the library building facilitated a redesign of services. The paper covers the process of developing program guidelines, securing funding, expectations of peer research consultants, the training process and lessons learned from a medium-sized academic library.

The findings after the first year demonstrate that undergraduates are highly skilled at providing high-quality reference services when provided with quality training and support. In addition, undergraduate students are now seeking out peer researchers for assistance with research items such as topic formation, keyword development in databases and proper citations.

No formal research or assessment of the program has been completed as of this time.

Well-trained Peer Research Consultants (PRCs) provide valued assistance to librarians in freshman composition classes, at the Ask Us reference desk, and to their peers. The program has allowed librarians to provide more outreach to their subject areas.

Students prefer going to their peers for research assistance rather than a professional librarian when given the choice. The training the PRCs are provided by librarians provides credibility and trust, which encourages undergraduate students to approach PRCs for assistance.

This paper draws on multiple iterations of peer reference models to create an original program, involving training student employees to provide reference services at a paraprofessional level, as well as providing the methodology for other academic libraries to develop and launch a similar program.

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the advantages and disadvantages of peer researchers in participant observation.

The research involved interviews with 11 fieldworkers aged 18–25 years.

The method improves access to settings and provides useful context information on participants.

It is a useful method in situations where normal access to participants and settings is problematic.

The paper is the first ever evaluation of supervised peer research (as opposed to peer-led research).

This paper aims to explore the use of lived experience research in peer work.

A suite of user-friendly and engaging lived experience research resources was introduced to consumers by peer workers. In-depth interviews were conducted with 33 consumer participants and five peer workers about their experiences. The data were analysed using qualitative content analysis.

The role of the peer workers appeared critical in ensuring that participants, despite their varied needs, preferences and backgrounds, derived optimum benefit from each resource. Features in resource delivery that promoted a positive experience included presenting the resources in the context of an existing relationship, providing clear explanations, going through resources together, encouraging reflection, taking enough time; and flexible delivery. Peer workers viewed the resources as potentially useful in their everyday peer work and as a valuable addition to their peer work toolkit.

The benefit of lived experience research to consumers is likely to be optimised by supportive and thoughtful delivery of the resources. Peer workers have the skills and are in an ideal position to do this. Bringing lived experience research to consumers provides peer workers with a potentially unique and helpful approach for supporting and promoting recovery and is congruent with their overall practice.

Lived experience research has the potential to benefit consumers directly but is rarely brought to their attention. This paper is the first to examine the potential role of peer workers in introducing learnings from lived experience research to consumers.

The purpose of this paper is twofold, first, to discuss the current and future issues around post-publication open peer review. Second, to highlight some of the main protagonists and platforms that encourages open peer review, pre-and post-publication.

The first part of the paper aims to discuss the facilitators and barriers that will enable and prevent academics engaging with the new and established platforms of scholarly communication and review. These issues are covered with the intention of proposing further dialogue within the academic community that ultimately address researchers’ concerns, whilst continuing to nurture a progressive approach to scholarly communication and review. The paper will continue to look at the prominent open post-publication platforms and tools and discuss whether in the future it will become a standard model.

The paper identifies several problems, not exclusive to open peer review that could inhibit academics from being open with their reviews and comments of other’s research. Whilst identifies opportunities to be had by embracing a new era of academic openness.

The paper summarises key platforms and arguments for open peer review and will be of interest to researchers in different disciplines as well as the wider academic community wanting to know more about scholarly communications and measurement.

This paper looks at many of the new platforms that have been previously ignored and discusses issues relating to open peer review that have only been touched on in brief by other published research.

This study reviews the existing literature on the U.S. peer review system and the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB) inspection system to assess our knowledge of audit regulation. The traditional self-regulatory system of the accounting profession came to an end, in 2002, when the PCAOB was established to oversee the audit firms of publicly traded companies. This paper contributes to the controversial debate about self-regulation versus independent regulation by analyzing, categorizing, and comparing the research findings on the peer review system and the PCAOB system along three dimensions: the validity of peer reviews and PCAOB inspections, the recognition of reviews and inspections by decision-makers (e.g., investors, bankers, committees), and the effect of reviews and inspections on audit quality. Synthesizing the research on the regulatory regimes suggests that the notion of external quality control, both through peer reviews and government inspections, is positively linked with an improvement of audit quality. At the same time, the analysis indicates that external users do not seem to recognise peer review and PCAOB reports as very useful instruments for decision-making, which is in line with an identified rather skeptical perception of the audit profession on reviews and inspections. Overall, this study reveals that although the academic literature on peer review and PCAOB inspection is extensive it has not produced definitive conclusions concerning various aspects of audit regulation. This paper shows how this blurred picture is due to conflicting research findings, the dominance of the quantitative research paradigm, and unchallenged assumptions within the literature, and concludes by proposing research opportunities for the future.

Kimbel Library used a peer reference model of service beginning in 2009 that was successful for several years but eventually phased out due to shifting priorities and needs. This article aims to describe Kimbel Library's second attempt at creating and using a peer reference program in 2018, how it was different from the original approach, and what ultimately happened.

In this article Reference Services Review Co-editor Sarah Barbara Watstein interviews Allison Faix, Instruction Coordinator and Librarian at Coastal Carolina University, about her experiences with peer reference services.

Because of the marked decline in the number of research-based questions asked at the library's help desk, the library found itself with smart, well-trained peer research assistants who were disappointed that their research assistance was not in greater demand.

This interview looks at two different ways that peer reference was implemented at the same institution starting in 2009.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the relatively hidden phenomenon of researchers who not only study dirty work but who also occupy the position of dirty workers. Drawing on the sociological debate on insider-outsider categories in research, this paper describes how these types of “dirty work/er researchers” understand and negotiate their occupational subjectivity and the methodological and epistemological resources they bring to their research practice.

Two biographical narratives from different types of “dirty work/er researchers” are analysed using a feminist epistemology of corporeality, social difference and power.

Ambivalence is an underlying dynamic of the narratives which indicate that the stigma attached to certain types of dirty work histories act to both facilitate and constrain research practice. Ambivalence disrupts strict binary categories often relied on in research such as insiders and outsiders, empowered and powerless and researcher and Other.

The experiences of “dirty work/er researchers” indicate a need to reconsider ethical, methodological, epistemological issues within social research.

Participatory research frameworks such as peer research should pay closer attention to issues of professional status, power and risk. Further research is required on what happens after peer researchers leave the field.

This paper contributes to the knowledge of the relatively hidden world of the “dirty work/er researcher”, their occupational experiences and the methodological and epistemological resources they bring to their job.

The purpose of this research is to create a definition of peer coaching using literature from various and disparate organizational and educational contexts. This research is intended to clarify what constitutes peer coaching overall, and guide the ever-growing practice of peer coaching.

This research uses a combination of inductive and deductive qualitative approaches through the implementation of qualitative content analysis (QDA). The research used a data reduction process with 87 existing scholarly articles in the area of peer coaching, in which the researchers focused on selected aspects of the data and followed the practice of staying close to manifest artifacts within the data.

The results of the qualitative data analysis indicated that five themes emerged within the literature. Themes were as follows: program structure, purpose and goals of peer coaching, peer coaching processes and mechanisms in which peer coaching is conducted, outcomes of peer coaching and relational contexts and functions of peer coaching relationships.

While there is an increase in peer coaching, research on this type of coaching is scarce with few empirical studies on the topic: what has been conducted has not been particularity reliable (Hagen and Peterson, 2014); and most of the published research is limited to education, nursing, other medical contexts and non-profit organizations. This research helps to clarify the nature of peer coaching and create a cogent definition that defines formal peer coaching within all peer coaching contexts.