The focus of peer review will depend on the type of book you have created with us—an originally written work, an anthology of previously published third-party readings, or a contributed volume.
Types of Peer Review Questions
All Books
The following are general areas of focus that peer reviewers will be asked to comment on regardless of book type:
- Overall structure and organization of the content
- Reading level and comprehension (considering the student audience)
- Visual/presentational elements
- Pedagogical elements
- Sources/citations and their validity
- How comprehensive the content is
- Use of language that might be viewed sensitively (unless used for the purpose of illustration)
Anthologies of Previously Published Third-Party Content
For anthologies comprised of previously published third-party content, we give authors the option to have peer review conducted. Peer review will not be focused on reviewing the readings themselves (as most if not all readings will have come from scholarly/peer-reviewed sources already). Instead, reviewers will be asked to more specifically comment on the following:
- Overall reading selections
- Organization of readings
- Relevance of readings to the course/subject area and target student audience
- Reading level for the target student audience
- Timeliness of readings
- Significance of readings in the field (i.e., canonical readings are represented)
- Diversity of reading sources
Contributed Volumes
For collections of contributed work—meaning never-before-published chapters, essays, and articles that contributing authors have written for the purpose of inclusion in your book—peer reviewers will be asked to comment more specifically on the following:
- Whether or not there is a unified voice between units/chapters and how this affects readability
- The level of consistency between units/chapters in terms of:
- Comprehensiveness of topical coverage
- Pedagogical elements
- Length
- Quality of writing