At the Rebus Community, we see peer review as a critical part of publishing open textbooks. In particular, it plays an important role in encouraging adoptions – both by assuring those looking to adopt a book that the material is of high quality, and also by building an engaged pool of reviewers who are themselves potential adopters.
Recognising this importance, we are working to develop – with community input – a clear, robust peer review process that can be applied to all open textbooks produced with Rebus (and potentially beyond).
Our recent Office Hours session on Peer Review for Open Textbooks surfaced some of the issues we will seek to address with the working group. These include:
- What should pre- & post-production review processes for open textbooks look like?
- How can we enable faculty adopters & students to provide feedback directly to authors?
- How can we leverage the peer review process to market the book to potential adopters?
- How do we manage the concerns and uncertainty around any non-traditional aspects of the review process?
- How might reviewers be compensated for their contributions?
- What tools do we need to support the process?
If you would like to be part of this group, please visit the project page and let us know you’re interested!
You can read a summary of the Office Hours session or watch the recording below.