Six weeks into this unit, your Developmental Editor will provide you with a report containing your full manuscript Developmental Edit Feedback. You will meet as a team with the Project Manager and Developmental Editor to discuss priorities and add to the “Chapter Draft Revision Actions” tab of the Deliverables spreadsheet. Please review the developmental edit workflow from Unit 9 for a reminder about how to implement the feedback on your full manuscript.

Your task is to incorporate as many edits as possible in the time available, prioritizing the most urgent indicated by the report. Then you will hand off your chapters to be imported into Pressbooks for student and instructor use. Stay laser focused on the essential elements of your book to ensure a successful pilot.

Accessibility is an important part of being ready for student readers. Before you hand in your revised chapters you will complete a Chapter Self-Review, which includes a check for accessibility issues.

What makes your manuscript “done” – or in this case, ready for pilot? Your manuscript is done when all the to-dos for each chapter are checked off on the “Chapter Draft To-Dos” tab of the Deliverables spreadsheet.

You might still have topics or sections that aren’t fully developed. This is OK! You will save all unfinished work in your Parking Lot document to return to in Year 2.

Looking even further ahead: if you plan to pilot your book this coming year as a course instructor, the Course Accelerator will begin in Year 2. The Course Accelerator is a short set of modules designed to help you create an equity-minded course map, meaningful assessments, and intuitive course site design. You will partner with the Instructional Designer to design your pilot course.

{Course #} Prelaunch Front and Back Matter

While author teams are waiting for the Developmental Editor’s feedback on their full manuscripts, they should prepare the {Course #} Prelaunch Front and Back Matter document. This is the content that comes before and after the chapters in your book and provides readers with information about the book. Some of the sections are already drafted in your {Course #} About This Book document.

In our books, front matter is intended for student readers (and secondarily, any other readers). Prioritize students who are opening to the very first page of your book and scope accordingly: keep your sections short and relevant so that students can dive right into their assigned reading.

Back matter is for all readers and can include information for other instructors, appendices, acknowledgements, and any other content you decide will be useful.

It is up to author teams to decide how collaboratively to write the front and back matter. The Lead Author will make sure that it is complete by the end of this unit.

In the launch version of our front and back matter, we include an open license statement. The open license will also be incorporated into the metadata of your launch Pressbook. For now, we share Year 2 versions of our books under all rights reserved copyright, with attributions for the openly licensed content that we reuse. Because they’re not done, we aren’t ready to encourage widespread reuse. They are not open educational resources – yet.

Stick to Your Timeline

What if you don’t have fall pilots – can you take longer to finish writing your manuscript? The answer is no, taking more time for pre-pilot revision is not an option. There are many reasons why the manuscript must be prepped to share by the deadline. Here are a few:

• The support team doesn’t have capacity to manage projects on multiple timelines.
• Peer review requires a complete manuscript in order to offer coherent and timely feedback on the book as a whole.
• We’re actively recruiting for course pilots and will share your complete Year 2 book so pilot instructors can see your great work and sign up to pilot it with their students.

Beyond these practical reasons, down time is also good for your project. So after this final pre-pilot review is done, put your chapters away until it’s time to work on them again in Year 2.

With this said, we know that life happens. If authors are delayed to the point that their chapters aren’t ready for fall pilot, we will do our best to mitigate the impact. Please let the Project Manager know if you’re getting off track. They may be able to make your chapter draft available to Pilot Instructors as supplemental material.

There is not another opportunity for chapter drafts to receive developmental edit, peer review, workforce advisory board review, pilot instructor feedback, or student feedback. If the chapter is written/rewritten during Year 2 by the Lead Author or a new Contributing Author, it will be handed off to the Revising Author in Year 3 as an unvetted draft.

Licenses and Attributions for Next Steps for Your Full Manuscript

“Next Steps for Your Full Manuscript” by Open Oregon Educational Resources is licensed under CC BY 4.0.