ABSTRACT
Peer Review is commonly applied during the final stage of a project and is used in the science community to determine the soundness of a conclusion and if the quality of information meets the standards of the scientific and technical community. Quality Assurance and Quality Control procedures are most effective when applied to planning, then during the process stage of a project, and during the review of a product. The gold standard for validating the quality of a study's results is comparison with a referenced data set, model, or result (Azouzi, Citation1999). However, costs can severely limits this approach for many applications. This article proposes an additional means for quality assessment using peer review as a quality assessment tool during the planning, process, and review of a project.
Acknowledgments
The authors thank the following U.S. EPA colleagues for their peer input: Donald Garofalo, Ross S. Lunetta, and Jeffrey C. Worthington.
The information in this document has been funded wholly by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). It has been subjected to the Agency's peer and administrative review and has been approved for publication. Mention of trade names or commercial products does not constitute endorsement for use. Opinions contained in this article are solely those of the authors and do not reflect the opinions, or the future direction, of the EPA or the Federal government.