scholarly journals Quality and Cost Matter: Students’ Perceptions of Open versus Non-Open Texts through a Single-Blind Review

Open Praxis ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 101
Author(s):  
Feng-Ru Sheu ◽  
Judy Grissett
Keyword(s):  
Student Perceptions ◽  
Experimental Approach ◽  
Blind Review ◽  
Materials Research ◽  
Bibliographical Information ◽  
Open Versus ◽  
Open Textbooks ◽  
Determining Factor ◽  
Single Blind ◽  
Open Materials

Although prior research has examined student perceptions of open materials, research investigating students’ perceptions of open versus copyright-restricted textbooks through a direct, experimental approach is lacking. To better understand how students perceive open textbooks outside the context of the classroom, we examined students’ perceptions of unfamiliar open and non-open (copyright-restricted) psychology textbooks. Forty-four introductory psychology students reviewed chapters from two open textbooks and two traditional/copyrightrestricted textbooks and then ranked the textbooks from most to least favourite. Students rated each chapter on several quality measures, including layout structure, visual appeal, ease of reading, and instructional features. Next, bibliographical information and cost were revealed, and students re-ranked the textbooks accordingly. Before knowing the bibliographic information and cost, students were more likely to prefer the two traditional textbooks. There after, they were more likely to select the open texts. Students often referred to textbook price as a determining factor for their change.

scholarly journals Results from a Psychology OER pilot program: faculty and student perceptions, cost savings, and academic outcomes

Open Praxis ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 83
Author(s):  
Juliana Magro ◽  
Sara V Tabaei
Keyword(s):  
Student Perceptions ◽  
Academic Outcomes ◽  
Cost Savings ◽  
Open Educational Resources ◽  
Pilot Program ◽  
Open Textbooks ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Pedagogical Changes ◽  
Better Than

This case study describes the library’s experience of collaborating with an undergraduate Psychology Department at Touro College to integrate open textbooks into their program. We discuss the pedagogical changes as well as explore the impact of Open Educational Resources (OER) on students’ savings, their academic outcomes and perceptions of OER. Furthermore, we highlight the successes and shortcomings in having the library as a central OER partner. To measure the results, we surveyed students and conducted a faculty survey and a focus group, in addition to analyzing the students’ final grades. This pilot program delivered strong results. The students’ perception was very positive, and faculty’s opinions on the textbooks used were mixed. Some professors felt that the textbook lacked important content, but because of its openness, they added their own content to the book. Students enrolled in OER courses performed better than those enrolled in the same courses using a commercial textbook.

scholarly journals Open to Open? An Exploration of Textbook Preferences and Strategies to Offset Textbook Costs for Online Versus On-Campus Students

2020 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 40-60 ◽  
Author(s):  
Talea Anderson ◽  
Carrie Cuttler
Keyword(s):  
Student Perceptions ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Control Group ◽  
University Campuses ◽  
Course Materials ◽  
Within Subjects ◽  
Psychology Courses ◽  
Willingness To Use ◽  
The Cost ◽  
Open Textbooks

As open textbook initiatives are on the rise, a burgeoning literature has begun exploring student perceptions of openly licensed textbooks used in higher education. Most of this research has lacked consideration of potential differences in the perceptions of online and on-campus students and has failed to include a control group of students using traditional textbooks. Therefore, the authors employed a 2 x 2 design to directly compare perceptions of online students with on-campus students assigned either open or traditional textbooks. Students (N = 925) enrolled in multiple sections of psychology courses at a midsized R1 institution completed a survey on their perceptions of their particular book’s format and features, as well as strategies they typically employ to offset the cost of expensive course materials. The results revealed that online and on-campus students report disparate strategies for offsetting the high costs of textbooks, different preferences in textbook formats (print versus digital versus both) when cost is not a factor, and differences in their ratings of the importance of various textbook features. Moreover, the results indicate that the use of open textbooks may increase preference for free digital textbooks over paid printed textbooks. Based on these results, the authors suggest that campuses might consider providing customized support to different student populations as open textbook initiatives gain in popularity on university campuses. Additionally, they suggest that prior exposure to open textbooks may increase students’ willingness to use openly licensed materials in future courses. They recommend future research on this question, using a longitudinal within-subjects designs.  

scholarly journals Peer Review Declaration

2021 ◽  
Vol 926 (1) ◽  
pp. 011002
Keyword(s):  
Peer Review ◽  
Management System ◽  
Environmental Science ◽  
Review Process ◽  
Acceptance Rate ◽  
Contact Person ◽  
Blind Review ◽  
Minor Revision ◽  
Scientific Standards ◽  
Single Blind

All papers published in this volume of IOP Conference Series: Earth and Environmental Science have been peer reviewed through processes administered by the Editors. Reviews were conducted by expert referees to the professional and scientific standards expected of a proceedings journal published by IOP Publishing. • Type of peer review: Single-blind Table 1 shows the evaluation aspects in the review process at The 3rd ICoGEE 2021. Several essential things in scientific articles are reviewed through this evaluation aspect, such as novelty, originality, clarity of methods and analysis, and their significance in science and technology. If an evaluation aspect has less than good quality, the reviewer provides suggestions for improvement, and the author must improve it or provide feedback. The reviewer will also offer recommendations such as: (i) accept without revision (if all aspects of the evaluation have exceptional score), (ii) accept with minor revision (if there are less than two evaluation aspects whose quality is below good), (iii) accept with major revision (if there are about 2 - 4 evaluation aspects that are below good quality), and (iv) reject (if more than four evaluation aspects have below good quality or are considered not to meet the essential requirements of scientific articles). • Conference submission management system: For official The 3rd ICoGEE 2021 webpage, we used: http://icogee.org, while for paper management system, we used Easy Chair: https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=icogee2021 • Number of submissions received: 197 • Number of submissions sent for review: 197 • Number of submissions accepted: 114 • Acceptance Rate (Number of Submissions Accepted / Number of Submissions Received X 100): 57,86% • Average number of reviews per paper: 2 • Total number of reviewers involved: 41 • Any additional info on review process: All papers had undergone plagiarism check (using Turnitin) and single-blind review by two reviewers • Contact person for queries: Name : Yuant Tiandho Affiliation : Department of Physics, Universitas Bangka Belitung Email : [email protected] / [email protected]

scholarly journals Peer review declaration

2021 ◽  
Vol 1204 (1) ◽  
pp. 011002
Keyword(s):  
Peer Review ◽  
Materials Science ◽  
Scientific Evidence ◽  
Similarity Index ◽  
Final Decision ◽  
Scientific Content ◽  
Blind Review ◽  
Materials Science And Engineering ◽  
Scientific Standards ◽  
Single Blind

All papers published in this volume of IOP Conference Series: Materials Science and Engineering have been peer reviewed through processes administered by the Editors. Reviews were conducted by expert referees to the professional and scientific standards expected of a proceedings journal published by IOP Publishing. • Type of peer review: Single-blind Peer review conducted was a single-blind review. • Review criteria: • Conference submission management system : Easychair and • Number of submissions received: 37 • Number of submissions sent for review: 37 • Number of submissions accepted : 11 • Acceptance Rate (Number of Submissions Accepted / Number of Submissions Received X 100): 29.72 % • Average number of reviews per paper: 2 • Total number of reviewers involved : 18 • Any additional info on review process: Criteria are based on scientific content, clarity and format. Authors must ensure that the papers submitted use the symposium format. There are three review processes: Initial Review, Peer Review and Acceptance Decision. Initial Review The Editors-in-Chief evaluates each manuscript in the submission theme to determine if its topic and content can be considered for the conference before being reviewed. Manuscripts that do not meet the initial criteria are rejected. Peer Review Papers accepted in the first stage underwent a review and revision process that took an average of two rounds for each paper. The peer review of each paper concentrates on objective and technical concerns to determine whether the research has been sufficiently well conceived, well executed, and well described to justify inclusion in the scientific evidence. After acceptance, articles were reread in English and checked for similarity via Turnitin. Articles with a similarity index greater than 20% were rejected. Acceptance decision Based on the reviewers’ comments, the editor-in-chief makes a final decision on the acceptability of the manuscript and communicates the decision to the authors, along with the reviewers’ reports. Contact person for queries: Dr. IREKTI Amar, [email protected]

scholarly journals Transparency in peer review: Exploring the content and tone of reviewers’ confidential comments to editors

PLoS ONE ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (11) ◽  
pp. e0260558
Author(s):  
Bridget C. O’Brien ◽  
Anthony R. Artino ◽  
Joseph A. Costello ◽  
Erik Driessen ◽  
Lauren A. Maggio
Keyword(s):  
Peer Review ◽  
Review Process ◽  
Qualitative Content Analysis ◽  
Peer Review Process ◽  
Argument Quality ◽  
Blind Review ◽  
Coding Scheme ◽  
Explicit Reference ◽  
Education Journal ◽  
Single Blind

Purpose Recent calls to improve transparency in peer review have prompted examination of many aspects of the peer-review process. Peer-review systems often allow confidential comments to editors that could reduce transparency to authors, yet this option has escaped scrutiny. Our study explores 1) how reviewers use the confidential comments section and 2) alignment between comments to the editor and comments to authors with respect to content and tone. Methods Our dataset included 358 reviews of 168 manuscripts submitted between January 1, 2019 and August 24, 2020 to a health professions education journal with a single blind review process. We first identified reviews containing comments to the editor. Then, for the reviews with comments, we used procedures consistent with conventional and directed qualitative content analysis to develop a coding scheme and code comments for content, tone, and section of the manuscript. For reviews in which the reviewer recommended “reject,” we coded for alignment between reviewers’ comments to the editor and to authors. We report descriptive statistics. Results 49% of reviews contained comments to the editor (n = 176). Most of these comments summarized the reviewers’ impression of the article (85%), which included explicit reference to their recommended decision (44%) and suitability for the journal (10%). The majority of comments addressed argument quality (56%) or research design/methods/data (51%). The tone of comments tended to be critical (40%) or constructive (34%). For the 86 reviews recommending “reject,” the majority of comments to the editor contained content that also appeared in comments to the authors (80%); additional content tended to be irrelevant to the manuscript. Tone frequently aligned (91%). Conclusion Findings indicate variability in how reviewers use the confidential comments to editor section in online peer-review systems, though generally the way they use them suggests integrity and transparency to authors.

Does double-blind peer review impact gender authorship trends? An evaluation of two leading neurosurgical journals from 2010 to 2019

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-9
Author(s):  
Uma V. Mahajan ◽  
Harsh Wadhwa ◽  
Parastou Fatemi ◽  
Samantha Xu ◽  
Judy Shan ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Peer Review ◽  
Board Certification ◽  
Current Status ◽  
Double Blind ◽  
Blind Review ◽  
Female Authorship ◽  
Before And After ◽  
Single Blind ◽  
Single Versus ◽  
Status Of Women

OBJECTIVEPublications are key for advancement within academia. Although women are underrepresented in academic neurosurgery, the rates of women entering residency, achieving board certification, and publishing papers are increasing. The goal of this study was to assess the current status of women in academic neurosurgery publications. Specifically, this study sought to 1) survey female authorship rates in the Journal of Neurosurgery (JNS [not including JNS: Spine or JNS: Pediatrics]) and Neurosurgery from 2010 to 2019; 2) analyze whether double-blind peer review (started in Neurosurgery in 2011) altered female authorship rates relative to single-blind review (JNS); and 3) evaluate how female authorship rates compared with the number of women entering neurosurgery residency and obtaining neurosurgery board certification.METHODSGenders of the first and last authors for JNS and Neurosurgery articles from 2010 to 2019 were obtained. Data were also gathered on the number and percentage of women entering neurosurgery residency and women obtaining American Board of Neurological Surgeons (ABNS) certification between 2010 and 2019.RESULTSWomen accounted for 13.4% (n = 570) of first authors and 6.8% (n = 240) of last authors in JNS and Neurosurgery publications. No difference in rates of women publishing existed between the two journals (first authors: 13.0% JNS vs 13.9% Neurosurgery, p = 0.29; last authors: 7.3% JNS vs 6.0% Neurosurgery, p = 0.25). No difference existed between women first or last authors in Neurosurgery before and after initiation of double-blind review (p = 0.066). Significant concordance existed between the gender of first and last authors: in publications with a woman last author, the odds of the first author being a woman was increased by twofold (OR 2.14 [95% CI 1.43–3.13], p = 0.0001). Women represented a lower proportion of authors of invited papers (8.6% of first authors and 3.1% of last authors were women) compared with noninvited papers (14.1% of first authors and 7.4% of last authors were women) (first authors: OR 0.576 [95% CI 0.410–0.794], p = 0.0004; last authors: OR 0.407 [95% CI 0.198–0.751], p = 0.001). The proportion of women US last authors (7.4%) mirrors the percentage of board-certified women neurosurgeons (5.4% in 2010 and 6.8% in 2019), while the percentage of women US first authors (14.3%) is less than that for women entering neurosurgical residency (11.2% in 2009 and 23.6% in 2018).CONCLUSIONSThis is the first report of female authorship in the neurosurgical literature. The authors found that single- versus double-blind peer review did not impact female authorship rates at two top neurosurgical journals.

Evaluation of Cost Savings and Perceptions of an Open Textbook in a Community College Science Course

2018 ◽  
Vol 80 (6) ◽  
pp. 410-415 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew R. Fisher
Keyword(s):  
Academic Achievement ◽  
Community College ◽  
Student Perceptions ◽  
Low Income ◽  
Cost Savings ◽  
Online Resources ◽  
Low Income Students ◽  
College Science ◽  
Novel Method ◽  
Open Textbooks

Open textbooks are free, online resources that can replace traditional textbooks and save students money. The costs of traditional textbooks continue to increase, and this can particularly affect at-risk, low-income students. Few studies have analyzed student perceptions of open textbooks and how they influence academic achievement, but the emerging trend is positive. In the present study, I assessed student perceptions of an open textbook and calculated the subsequent cost savings. Although there were some limitations to my study, such as a low sample size, my results closely mirror previous studies in that most students had favorable opinions of the open textbook and would prefer to use them over traditional textbooks. The average cost savings per student was $81 for one course, determined using a novel method that does not assume all students buy new textbooks. These savings were likely important to the students, the majority of whom worked five hours or more and have received Pell Grants or other tuition waivers.

scholarly journals Student Perceptions of College Faculty Who Use OER

2017 ◽  
Vol 18 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Gabrielle Vojtech ◽  
Judy Grissett
Keyword(s):  
Student Perceptions ◽  
Public University ◽  
College Faculty ◽  
Open Educational Resources ◽  
Educational Resources ◽  
Psychology Courses ◽  
Undergraduate Psychology ◽  
Open Textbooks

<p class="3">Research indicates that students find open educational resources (OER) favorable, but there is no research regarding students’ perceptions of faculty who use open textbooks. In the present study we examined this topic experimentally with two undergraduate psychology courses at a small public university. Participants read two passages—one about an instructor using an open textbook and another using a traditional copyrighted textbook—and rated each instructor on a range of characteristics through closed- and open-ended questions. Participants rated faculty using an open textbook higher on kindness, encouragement, and creativity than faculty using a traditional copyrighted textbook, and were more likely to want to take a class with faculty using an open textbook. Participants frequently mentioned textbook cost in their justifications.</p>

Creating an Inexpensive 3D Printer to Engage Students in Material Science Education

2011 ◽  
Vol 1320 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joseph J. Muskin ◽  
Kathleen M. Davis
Keyword(s):  
Student Perceptions ◽  
Material Science ◽  
School Curriculum ◽  
Polymerization Reaction ◽  
3 Dimensional ◽  
Black And White ◽  
Materials Research ◽  
Secondary School Curriculum ◽  
Design Objects ◽  
The University

ABSTRACTMaterial science can be used to enrich secondary school curriculum and illuminate for students the connection between science and technology. Based on materials research being conducted at the University of Illinois, we have developed an interdisciplinary activity that integrates engineering with chemistry and material science.Students investigate the behaviors of polymers by creating 3-dimensional (3-D) objects. Students can design objects that they “print” on the order of a cubic inch in about 20 minutes. The process students use to create these objects shows the application of engineering to material science in a novel and engaging way.A photoactive chemical is initiated by the UV and blue light emitted from a data projector. This causes the formation of free radicals, which interact with molecules of a monomer and cause a polymerization reaction. The visual result of this reaction is that a liquid solidifies where students shine light. With black-and-white images, a data projector can direct the light to form any shape. This process can be easily modified to create true 3-D objects by adding another layer of the liquid to the top of the object and then shining the light again. With about 20 dollars worth of supplies from a hardware store, a simple staging device can be created to greatly simplify the process to create a 3-D printer in the classroom. Fabrication of this device can be done by students because the projector controls the x and y array of pixels; the object only needs to move in the z direction, unlike traditional rapid prototyping machines which control movement in the x, y, and z directions.Results of integration into high school and college curriculum are discussed, and methods of integration and student perceptions of the activity are reported.

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