Open Education Resources (OERs) have the explicit advantage of being a continuous process as opposed to being locked behind “editions” and the publication process that limits improvement and adjustment. OER materials allow for connecting with students on a personal level rather than keeping learning at a from-on-high positionality. These are common discussions about the merits of OER and are often used to argue for these over traditionally published textbooks.

However, the unfortunate effect of the above mentioned benefits gives a perceived lack of oversight and peer review, which leads to concern for quality issues.

The goal of the Publishing Support Team is to address larger concerns to the best of our ability and alleviate pain points for the authors.

The University of Maryland’s Global Campus lays out a comprehensive analysis of pros and cons to using OER.

An article titled “Recognizing and Overcoming Obstacles: What It Will Take to Realize the Potential of OER” discusses the barriers to entry for using OER in typical settings. The discussion in the article discusses many key ideas that the University of Maryland’s Global Campus guide summarizes:

Concerns about Quality

By going through our multi-pronged review process, authors can be assured of the professional quality of their work. Each member of our team brought their specializations to every text in the catalogue to ensure the quality and integrity of the book.

Accessibility and Usability

ROTEL’s focus is on inclusivity, which in turn has a focus on accessibility and equity. It’s difficult for authors who are full-time professors and instructors to keep up-to-date with the best practice in Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (using WCAG 2.2 as a standard), so the PST incorporated those best practices for them.

Perceived Time Commitment

By taking the load of publication off the authors, their time commitment becomes significantly less while ensuring the level of quality remains high. One of the advantages of the traditional publication process of textbooks is that it allows for the Subject Matter Experts to focus on the content and allow experts in the fields of style, standards, and consistency to take care of the other aspects.

Peer Review

The Peer Review process was managed outside of the Publishing Support Team. Authors identified at least two Peer Reviewers for their OER. A small stipend was provided by the ROTEL Project on the completion and return of the Peer Review Rubric, which was also shared with the faculty authors.

This review process overview and guide has been adapted from Chapter 5 of The Rebus Guide to Publishing Open Textbooks (So Far) by Apurva Ashok, Zoe Wake Hyde, and Kaitlin Schilling, and the CC ECHO Pear Review Guide was developed by CC ECHO. Both are licensed as CC BY 4.0.