The sections below introduce the various external audiences that will use and review your book during Year 2. These new audiences are the readers to keep in mind during the final revision stage of Year 1. The feedback they provide will inform the work that the Revising Author completes during Year 3.

Year 2 Audience: Course Pilots

Course pilots are an exciting phase of this project. Your hard work comes to life as it leaves the small circle of authors and our support team. Course pilot instructors work with the Instructional Designer to create aligned, equity-minded learning pathways using your textbook. Ancillary content will be collected in an accessible Google Site and linked from the launch textbook.

One important purpose of the course pilots is to gather feedback on the design and content of your manuscript from students and pilot instructors. This feedback helps the project stay accountable to project goals of course materials that are learner focused, represent diverse voices, ensure accessibility, and are designed for an Oregon context. Pilot books include links to chapter feedback forms for students and instructors. Students also complete end-of-term surveys that provide global feedback on the project and offer suggestions for improvement on the book as a whole.

If you are going to run a course pilot in Year 2, you can design assessments that result in student work for future inclusion in the textbook. Please review the feature on Open Pedagogy in Unit 3 if this idea interests you, and feel welcome to consult with the Instructional Designer to explore the opportunities and time constraints involved.

Authors can also work with pilot instructors to invite students to contribute to the textbook through open educational practices. Course pilot instructors may be interested in students having real-world applications for their course work. Let the Project Manager know if you want to meet with course pilot instructors to discuss this possibility.

Year 2 Audience: Full Manuscript Peer Review

During Year 2 of this project, we’ll send your full manuscript out for peer review. Subject matter experts will read your entire draft and provide feedback for improvement.

Peer review is integral to the production of textbooks in this project. Its presence signals to a prospective adopter that the work has rigorous standards for quality. This is especially significant when creating openly licensed textbooks, as the quality, comprehensiveness, clarity, and currency of open textbooks and open educational resources is often called into question by skeptics. Peer review is important to dispel these myths. Not only that, but experience shows that reviewers very often end up adopting the text they’ve reviewed.

External perception aside, peer review is a means for you to receive valuable recommendations that will make your book stronger. It’s a chance for you to share your work so far with colleagues to ensure that the content is appropriate, accurate, and adequately covers the material.

Full manuscript peer review process

Your manuscript will go out to peer reviewers at the end of Month 11. We ask the peer reviewers whether it aligns with statewide curriculum maps and workforce standards; and how well it addresses our criteria for success: learner focus, representation of diverse voices, accessibility, and Oregon context.

Remember that in this project we practice a form of open peer review. This is a shift from traditional peer review in which reviewers remain anonymous. Reviewers can choose for their comments to be shared with authors anonymously, but they also have an opportunity to leave comments directly in your document that are associated with their own name. This practice allows for a conversation and encourages collegiality and accountability. In all cases, authors know who their reviewers are, even if they don’t know exactly which reviewer provided which feedback.

For an optional deep dive into peer review, including innovative practices, we recommend visiting Peer Review: A Critical Primer and Practical Course [Website]. The author of this book, Emily Ford, helped our program develop our peer review process.

Peer review questions for the full manuscript

While author teams are waiting for the Developmental Editor’s feedback on their full manuscripts, they should discuss what would be most helpful to learn from reviewers about the manuscript. What do you consider to be the strengths of your manuscript? What are its weaknesses? Where do you feel uncertain?

Use the {Course #} Manuscript Peer Review Questions document to decide on a maximum of 10 questions you will ask peer reviewers. You don’t have to start from scratch – this document is populated with a range of possible reviewer questions that you can use. You can see an example of what peer reviewers have been asked about a past project: {Course #} Manuscript Peer Review Questions [Google Form].

Identify potential peer reviewers for the full manuscript

As with review of your {Course #} About this Book document, identifying peer reviewers for manuscripts is an all-hands-on-deck task. Please help by providing names of people in your field who you would like to have as reviewers. The leadership team will also do outreach to identify more potential reviewers. We need a big list of potential reviewers because many people aren’t able to commit to a review when we ask.

Consider inviting peer review from colleagues who publish on equity-related topics in your field and who openly discuss how their lived experiences shape their scholarship and teaching.

Licenses and Attributions for External Audiences in Year 2

“External Audiences in Year 2” by Open Oregon Educational Resources is licensed under CC BY 4.0.