Dear Peer Reviewers,
One of the key roles of the peer reviewers for PDS datasets is to ensure that the data being archived will be useful to future generations of scientists. This means that the data must be compliant with PDS standards, but it also means that the there must be enough information that a random scientist can figure out how to make good scientific use of the data. To that end, we encourage all reviewers to ask themselves some relevant scientific questions based on the data being archived. The reviewers should then look at the actual data at some level to ensure that the data are readable - machine readable and/or human readable as appropriate - and then look to see if there is enough information to answer the scientific question. If there is insufficient information - say so. If the information seems misleading or confusing - say so. If there appears to be an anomaly in the data - say so. We note that the variety of analysis environments used by different scientists sometimes leads to computer-specific issues of which we are not aware, so be sure to note those kinds of problems also. If for any reason you get stuck on your first attempt to look at the data, don't wait until you get to Maryland for the review - contact us immediately to see if we can help. Given travel schedules, it is probably best if you contact several of us in parallel (email addresses available elsewhere in your package).
In order to encourage the kind of questioning that we want, here are a few scientific questions of the sort that you might ask. You can use these questions or you can just use these to stimulate your thinking and ask other questions.