Peer review is an important part of publishing an OER. Sometimes the quality of an OER can be questioned and by including a peer review component in the development of your resource this contributes to a quality product. There are different ways that an OER can be reviewed including:
Including a review statement with your resource can reassure users of it's quality and authority.
As one of the main purposes of developing an OER is for use in teaching and learning, it can be useful to have it reviewed by students prior to open release. This could be achieved by including the developed resource in the unit site or as a learning activity with current students, who can be asked to provide feedback. If the resource is large such as an open textbook, on Pressbooks these can be published with a link that students can access prior to adding these to the directory. In this way, the OER can be used with students and feedback can be obtained prior to publishing the text widely. Students can be great at identifying gaps in a texts as well as reinforcing the resources completeness in supporting their learning needs.
Having the OER reviewed by colleagues can also provide feedback ensuring a quality resource. This can be done in a number of ways including:
During peer review, subject experts read through your OER and provide critical feedback and suggestions for improvement. Peer review ensures your content is accurate, adequately covers the material and is suitable for classroom use. Because open texts are low-cost and easy to produce, they are sometimes perceived as low-quality compared to commercial textbooks. Peer review allows you to dispel these notions by ensuring a high-quality product. Not only does peer review signal to potential adopters that your open text has passed through a rigorous quality control process, but reviewers often end up adopting texts they have reviewed themselves.
There are a number of different peer review models you can adopt for your open textbook:
When designing your peer review process, you will need to consider:
When deciding whether to action reviewers’ feedback, you’ll need to assess the usefulness of their reviews. A good review is:
Review statements are a great way to let potential adopters know your textbook has undergone peer review and is a high-quality resource. It’s also an opportunity to credit your reviewers.
Before you publish your OER, you can add a review statement to the resource. This may be a formal statement in a separate section of the back matter or it may be an acknowledgement in the introduction - where ever best suits the resource and the review process.
Some examples of formal review statements are included below.
[Book title] was published by [organisation]. [Organisation] textbooks undergo peer review from [summarise peer review process, e.g. peer review from school/faculty subject experts and beta testing in classrooms].
This book has been peer reviewed by [number of] subject experts from [number of] higher education institutions. [Each chapter/the full-text/etc.] received a [single-blind/double-blind/open] review from [number of] reviewers, based on their area of expertise. The reviewers were largely [academics/professionals/institutional staff] with required specialist knowledge in [specify concepts, topics or fields in your discipline].
Reviews were structured around considerations of the intended audience of the textbook and examined the [criteria in review rubric, e.g. comprehensiveness, accuracy and relevance] of content. Reviews were also focused on [additional review criteria, e.g. longevity, clarity, consistency, organisation, grammatical errors, cultural relevance]. See the review guide [link to the review guide used for your project] for more details. Changes suggested by the reviewers covered mainly [specify areas here] and were incorporated by [describe how changes were made].
[List names of author(s), project manager(s), review coordinator(s)] and the team at [organisation] would like to thank the review team for the time, care and commitment they contributed to the project. We recognise that peer reviewing is a generous act of service on their part. This textbook would not be the robust, valuable resource that it is were it not for their feedback and input.
Reviewers included:
[list reviewers and affiliated institutions, unless review was anonymous].
Adapted from Open Educational Resources Collective Workflow by Council of Australians University Librarians is licensed under CC BY 4.0.