Hwe mu dua as a metaphor for peer review

Hwe mu dua is an Akan adinkra symbol from Ghana. Its name comes from hwe mu, to measure or examine closely, and dua, stick or rod. It is often translated as the measuring rod, or the rod of investigation. It represents excellence, superior quality, and the practice of close examination before something is accepted or valued.

In this course, we are using hwe mu dua to mean:

• The bars or sticks: Prior skills that you had before the course.
• Handle with joining bar: The new core skills gained from the whole course. Write specific skills that grew out of the exercise, for example using the San Code, AIEC or the AI policy.
• Joints (areas of possible weakness): What in the course took real effort to understand or apply, a place you had to work at to hold together. Weak joints are areas of weakness, something you are still not fully confident in.
• The base: Foundational knowledge required to review African authorship, for example Ubuntu philosophy
• The middle gap between bars (areas to improve): What you intend to strengthen or study further, the foundation you plan to build on in your future reviewing practice. Write what you intend to strengthen or study further, the foundation you plan to build on in your future reviewing practice.

Why this fits peer review

A manuscript, cannot be accepted on appearance alone. A well written abstract, a confident tone, or an impressive list of citations may look right at first glance, but none of these are the actual substance of the work. The reviewer’s task, like the rod’s, is to measure what is actually there: whether the theory holds, whether the methods are sound, whether the ethics statement reflects what was truly done, whether the conclusions follow from the evidence. A manuscript that reads well but does not hold up under this closer measure has not passed the test, however good it looked on first reading.

This is also why the peer reviewer code insists that a reviewer’s comments cover every part of the manuscript, title through to references, rather than a single overall impression. A rod measures along its whole length, not just at one point. A review that only comments on the introduction, or only on the writing style, has measured a fraction of the work and called it a full assessment.

Firmness without harm

A measuring rod is also a useful image for the balance the peer reviewer code asks for between firmness and fairness. A rod does not bend its measurement to spare the person being measured, and it does not need to be unkind to be accurate. It simply tells the truth about what is there. This is the standard a reviewer is asked to hold: a firm, honest measure, delivered without harshness, because the rod’s purpose was never to punish what fell short, only to establish clearly what had, and had not, met the standard.

Symbols as a form of knowledge

Choosing hwe mu dua as the symbol for this course is also a statement in itself. It reflects a wider principle that runs through the whole course: that African societies have long carried standards, ethics and critical practice through symbols and proverbs, not only through written text. A single adinkra symbol like this one can hold as much meaning as a paragraph of written instruction, provided the person reading it understands the knowledge behind it. This is the same principle behind the course’s position on orature and lived experience as legitimate evidence in a manuscript. Knowledge does not need to be written down in a particular form to be rigorous, and a reviewer who dismisses a proverb, a symbol, or an oral account as lesser evidence has misunderstood where African knowledge has always lived.

Reflection

Before moving on, consider your own reviewing practice against the image of the rod. Where in a recent review did you measure the actual substance of the work, and where might you have been swayed by how something looked on the surface, its length, its confident tone, its polished language, rather than what it actually contained?