Category Archives: Journals

UVic Libraries Publication Launch: in CIRCULATION

We are pleased to announce the library’s new signature publication, in CIRCULATION––a magazine focused on library impact at UVic and abroad.

Featuring stories about podcasting, digital preservation, the Peter and Ana Lowens UVic Libraries Special Collections Student Fellowship, and recent library news, this donor-focused magazine celebrates the committed work of library staff on campus and in the community.

in CIRCULATION will be published annually with a small print run.

Please share widely with your colleagues and friends.

Best,
Lisa A (on behalf of Christine, Samantha, Artie and Shahira)

OTESSA Journal volume 2, Issue 1 & 2

Please check out the latest work published in the OTESSA Journal (Volume 2, Issues 1 and 2 published Dec 2022). The journal is using a continuous publication model, so will be posting articles as they move through the editorial process. It is an open-access journal with no Article Processing Charges, so your membership, sponsorship, and conference registration supports the publication activities of OTESSA among the other work we do as we build and grow. The journal is now quietly welcoming submissions from the global public in the discourse, research, or practice sections. To join or renew your membership, please visit the membership form on our website.

We will be pushing out our social media promotion of these works from our @OTESSA_org, @OTESSA_fr, and @OTESSAjournal accounts on Twitter and other platforms. Thank you in advance for helping to promote these works as they are shared! We encourage you to share these works out using the #OTESSA and #OTESSAjournal hashtags in addition to those relevant to the article content.

VOLUME 2, ISSUE 1 

 Discourse Articles

Outside-In: Entangled Openness as Subversion Influencing Emergent Change, Maha Bali

Research Articles

A Synthesis of Research on Mental Health and Remote Learning: How Pandemic Grief Haunts Claims of CausalityStephanie Moore, George Veletsianos, Michael K. Barbour

Crowdsourcing the (Un)Textbook: Rethinking and Future Thinking the Role of the Textbook in Open PedagogyMichelle Harrison, Michael Paskevicius, Irwin Devries, Tannis Morgan

Practice Articles

The UK Open University COVID Response: A Sector Case StudyMartin Weller

Humanizing with Humility: The Challenge of Creating Caring, Compassionate, and Hopeful Educational Spaces in Higher EducationSarah Driessens, Michelann Parr

ePortfolio Pedagogy: Stimulating a Shift in MindsetRita Zuba Prokopetz

VOLUME 2, ISSUE 2

Discourse Articles

On the Misappropriation of Spatial Metaphors in Online LearningJon Dron

Research Articles

Surveillance in the System: Data as Critical Change in Higher EducationSamantha Szcyrek, Bonnie Stewart

Introducing A Reflective Framework for the Assessment and Recognition of MicrocredentialsFrancisco Iniesto, Rebecca Ferguson, Martin Weller, Rob Farrow, Rebecca Pitt

Integrating Technology With Instructional Frameworks to Support all Learners in Inclusive ClassroomsDiane Montgomery

Elders’ Conversations: Perspectives on Leveraging Digital Technology in Language RevivalMelissa Bishop

Peer Review Week 2022

peer review week logo

September 19 to 23 sees the international celebration of Peer Review Week in the academic community, emphasizing the central role peer review plays in scholarly communication. The theme for 2022 is Research Integrity: Creating and Supporting Trust in Research.

What is peer review?

In broad terms, peer review is the pre-publication evaluation of scholarly work by experts in the same field as the submitting authors or with expertise in the methodology they chose. It is common in academic publishing and helps ensure the rigor of publications. Its aim is to either help improve or reject submitted papers that do not meet minimal criteria of good scholarly practice, originality, and methodology. The purpose of this quality control is to build and maintain trust in the published scholarly content, the publishing platforms, and the research process as a whole. Reviewers are invited by the editors or suggested by the authors. Referee activity is considered a courtesy and an academic honor, reflecting a certain reputation and expertise that a reviewer has gained. It is not usually compensated.

A brief history of the peer review process

It is challenging to determine precisely how old the academic peer review process is. While some historians of scholarship have dated it back to the pre-Gutenberg era, and others quote Francis Bacon as one of its trailblazers, many histories of the scholarly system agree that the origins of the contemporary peer review system can be traced back to the editorial practices of the learned societies in the early to mid-18th century, with the Royal Society of London commonly named as one of the main originators.

Contemporary peer review slowly emerged in the second half of the twentieth century. The steadily growing volume of scientific publications called for a screening process, and the newly invented Xerox photocopier made it possible to send out copies of manuscripts to multiple reviewers on a large scale. It was not until the 1960s and 1970s that some of the most reputable journals in academia embraced the practice (Nature in 1964; The Lancet in 1976). Today it is a well-established system, guided by standards and principles that preserve it as one of the pillars of the academic publishing ecosystem.

The increasing awareness of the concept in the broader public is the latest chapter in the history of peer review. Previously it was known primarily to an expert scholarly audience. The Covid-19 pandemic changed that. The tremendous demand for readily available knowledge about the virus led to an unprecedented acceleration of related research. To make the exponentially growing SARS-COV-2 research available as quickly as possible, interest in preprints – scientific papers published before peer review on dedicated servers – increased. Because these preprints are now more commonly used as primary sources, explanations of the peer review process have since found their way into journalistic reporting on scientific topics.

Different types of peer review

Since its establishment, the peer review landscape has diversified. Not only are there different approaches to traditional peer review, but with the advent of the open scholarship movement, newer peer review practices have emerged. They break with some of the established practices of classical peer review, such as anonymity (in Open Peer Review) or confidentiality (in Social Peer Review).

The terminology around peer review is not always used consistently, but some procedures and their terms have become largely accepted. The main types of traditional peer review are commonly distinguished by their approach to anonymity. Anonymity is seen as a critical factor in traditional peer review to eliminate or minimize potential bias among reviewers. Any comments and editing suggestions by the referees remain confidential and are not published along with the work.

  • Single-blind PR – Reviewers are aware of authors’ identities.
  • Double-blind PR – Neither authors nor referees know each other’s identities.

Recently, the term “blind” has come under criticism for being ableist and a number of journals and publishing platforms have shifted to referring to it as “anonymous peer review”.

Newer, innovative types of peer review step away from anonymity/confidentiality and include:

  • Open Peer Review – The identities of authors and reviewers are known to each other and sometimes revealed to the public (there are other interpretations of this term).
  • Transparent Peer Review – The identities of authors and reviewers are known to each other, and any comments and editing requests by the referees will be made publicly available. The published article usually has an accessible version history.
  • Social or Community Peer Review – The wider (academic) community is invited to participate in reviewing a submitted work and suggest changes. These suggestions and the resulting revisions are usually documented publicly. This approach can be found in the form of pre-publication or post-publication reviews.

Common critique of the peer review system

Critics of traditional peer review question whether it is adequate in a scholarly environment evolving toward more open procedures and principles. Commons criticisms include:

While many critics believe the peer review system needs improvement and some are calling for its elimination, there seems to be an ongoing consensus among an academic majority that the system is a foundation of academia.

Current discussions

This is only a selection of current discussions. Peer review is a broad topic that is studied extensively not only in scholarly communication, philosophy of science, and scientometrics but also in individual academic disciplines themselves.

Further Information

To learn more about peer review and Peer Review Week, consult the Peer Review Week committee’s official blog, their Youtube Channel, or Scholarly Kitchen’s series of articles in celebration of the event. On Twitter, follow the handle @PeerRevWeek and use the hashtag #peerreviewweek22.

KULA: CFP COVID-19, Online Instruction, and Open Educational Resources

Request for Proposals: COVID-19, Online Instruction, and Open Educational Resources

KULA: Knowledge Creation, Dissemination, and Preservation Studies is requesting proposals for a forum on the shift to online teaching during the COVID-19 pandemic. We seek commentaries and teaching reflections (especially contributions that openly share syllabi and teaching materials with the broader community) from faculty members, librarians, and other staff working at post-secondary institutions who have transitioned to and developed pedagogical materials, especially Open Educational Resources (OERs), for online instruction in the last year. How has your teaching evolved? What are the demands and challenges of the digital environment? What has worked, and what has not? How have students responded?

As a multidisciplinary journal, we encourage submissions from scholars and practitioners across disciplines, and we are interested in experiences with both synchronous and asynchronous teaching. We also welcome submissions with student collaborators.

Please submit proposals of approximately 300 words under the section “Proposals: COVID-19, Online Instruction, and Open Educational Resources” here: https://kula.uvic.ca/index.php/kula/submission/wizard. We are accepting proposals until March 15, 2021.

The deadline for full submissions, which will undergo blind peer review, will be May 31, 2021

Featured research: Emergency remote education and COVID-19

A global outlook to the interruption of education due to COVID-19 pandemic: Navigating in a time of uncertainty and crisis

By Aras Bozkurt, et al.

Two UVic researchers are co-authors on this open access paper: Valerie Irvine and Michael Paskevicius.

Abstract:

Uncertain times require prompt reflexes to survive and this study is a collaborative reflex to better understand uncertainty and navigate through it. The Coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic hit hard and interrupted many dimensions of our lives, particularly education. As a response to interruption of education due to the Covid-19 pandemic, this study is a collaborative reaction that narrates the overall view, reflections from the K-12 and higher educational landscape, lessons learned and suggestions from a total of 31 countries across the world with a representation of 62,7% of the whole world population. In addition to the value of each case by country, the synthesis of this research suggests that the current practices can be defined as emergency remote education and this practice is different from planned practices such as distance education, online learning or other derivations. Above all, this study points out how social injustice, inequity and the digital divide have been exacerbated during the pandemic and need unique and targeted measures if they are to be addressed. While there are support communities and mechanisms, parents are overburdened between regular daily/professional duties and emerging educational roles, and all parties are experiencing trauma, psychological pressure and anxiety to various degrees, which necessitates a pedagogy of care, affection and empathy. In terms of educational processes, the interruption of education signifies the importance of openness in education and highlights issues that should be taken into consideration such as using alternative assessment and evaluation methods as well as concerns about surveillance, ethics, and data privacy resulting from nearly exclusive dependency on online solutions.
This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the
Creative Commons Attribution License. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/
This article was originally published at:
10.5281/zenodo.3878571
Bozkurt, A., Jung, I., Xiao, J., Vladimirschi, V., Schuwer, R., Egorov, G., Lambert, S. R., … &
Paskevicius, M. (2020). A global outlook to the interruption of education due to COVID-19
pandemic: Navigating in a time of uncertainty and crisis. Asian Journal of Distance
Education, 15(1), 1-126. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3878572.

To read more, visit UVicSpace