Special issue information
- Title: OER and the Academic Library
- Editors: Elizabeth Dill, Mary Ann Cullen, and Christopher Shaffer
- Abstract submission deadline: May 1, 2019
- Publication date: November, 2020
Nature and scope of the issue
Open educational resources (OER) are teaching, learning, and research materials that reside in the public domain, or that have been released under an open license that permits no-cost access, use, adaptation, and/or redistribution by others. Free-to-students materials that are not openly licensed, such as library resources, are often included in these programs. Academic libraries are able to function at the center and heart of OER initiatives (Young, 2018). These libraries are ideally positioned to support and lead implementation of the OER effort on college and university campuses.
The necessity for low-cost educational materials has reached a critical level. Textbook prices have increased at greater than three times the rate of inflation (Gaines, 2018; Perry, 2012) and the financial impact on students has been a driving force in the OER movement (Gaines, 2018; Senak, 2014, 2015, 2016). This financial impact is revealed in the lower rates at which different ethnicities earn college degrees (Colvard, Watson, & Park, 2018).
In advocating for OER, the NAACP states, “For too many years, too many children, particularly African American, other minorities, and underprivileged people from all groups have been subjected to lesser educational opportunities, leading to lesser opportunities for success in their personal and professional lives. A major contributing factor to the disparities continues to be the lack of appropriate instructional materials.”
The 2018 New Media Consortium Horizon Report references “proliferation of Open Educational Resources” as a midterm key trend. EDUCAUSE names OER as a 2019 top strategic technology. EdSurge declares 2017 OER’s breakthrough year as an essential teaching tool. SPARC reports that nearly one in 10 faculty across the nation are using OER. OER facilitate cost savings and have been demonstrated to increase students’ engagement and improve their learning (Weller et al., 2015). Colvard, Watson, & Park (2018) found that students are likely to have better performance when OER are used versus traditional texts.
This issue of Library Trends invites authors to explore and advance a broad range of topics and positions relevant to the creation, dissemination, use, and impact by critically addressing questions surrounding the advancing trend of OER.
Special note
Library Trends is a gold embargoed journal published by Johns Hopkins University Press. After two years the content is freely available in IDEALS, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign’s institutional repository. During those two years, authors are free to put a copy of the final version of the record PDF in their own repository and make it openly available. The author agreement is available for review upon request.
List of potential topics
What role does advocacy play in OER?
How has information literacy been embedded within OER initiatives?
Describe the role of community in OER success. How can librarians successfully lead initiatives among manage initiative-leading amongst numerous, significant stakeholders?
Characterize the role of labor and funding in OER creation. Is OER knowledge-production sustainable?
What innovative approaches have been used to involve students in OER creation?
How does one contend with corporatization/commercialization of OER? Can these the profit and nonprofit interests coexist? Can they commingle?
What is the value of OER information? How are assumptions of inferior quality overcome?
What discoverability issues exist in retrieving OER materials? How do you catalog OER effectively, so they can be overcome?
How does one effectively paint a picture of OER’s efficacy in terms of adoption rate, cost-savings, and student performance?
How is OER engagement measured and learning assessed?
What is OER's role in privilege, equity, inclusion, representation or diversity? How can OER transcend a white male content bias?
How do OER transcend open textbooks to open pedagogy?
Instructions for submission
The editors for this special issue of Library Trends request that interested authors submit an abstract of 500 words, following Chicago format for parenthetical and reference list citations, by May 1, 2019. Abstracts should be sent to edill@troy.edu with the subject of “Library Trends: Abstract Submission - <author last name>.”
All submissions should follow the formatting requirements of the journal. Abstracts should include the author’s name, affiliation, and e-mail address. If more than one author is listed on the abstract, the editors will communicate with the first author only. The editors also request that the author(s) includes an informal biography explaining how her/his past and present research and/or professional experience informs her/his submission.
After review of the proposed abstracts, we will invite authors to submit full papers in early June, 2019. If you are not selected, you will also be notified at the same time. Full papers will be due to the editors by December 1, 2019; they will undergo a double-blind peer review.
The editors are also seeking qualified peer reviewers with expertise in the topic area (e.g., OER, open access, open pedagogy). If you are interested in reviewing for the special issue, please contact edill@troy.edu.
The journal expects to publish the issue in November, 2020.
Timeline
- May 1, 2019 Abstract submissions due
- June 2019 Editors will notify author(s) whether abstract is accepted
- December 1, 2019 Manuscript drafts due
- November 1, 2019 Rolling peer review begins
- February 1, 2020 Rolling peer review ends
- February 15, 2020 Manuscript decisions announced
- March-April 15, 2020 Manuscript revision period
- May 1, 2020 Final manuscripts due to editor for publication preparation
- November 2020 Special issue published
Editors
Elizabeth Dill (MFA, MLIS) is an assistant professor and Director of Library Services at Troy University’s Dothan campus. A member of Troy’s Textbook Initiative Committee, she leads efforts to bring OER to the Dothan campus. The low-cost digital textbooks have saved Troy students over $294,200 University-wide. She is also an adjunct professor of theater, experienced in teaching with OER resources and incorporating open pedagogy in instruction. She can be reached at edill@troy.edu.
Mary Ann Cullen (MS Library Studies, MS Psychology) is an assistant professor and Associate Department Head at Georgia State University’s Alpharetta Campus. She has been involved in the open and affordable educational resources movement since 2013, when she participated in the adaptation of an OER text for Freshman Composition. Since then, she has assisted faculty with OER adoption and grants, presented on the Librarians’ roles in OERs at ACRL, the Distance Library Services Conference, and a Carterette Series webinar. She has been recognized as an Affordable Learning Georgia Featured Advocate. She can be reached at mcullen@gsu.edu.
Christopher Shaffer (MLIS, EdD) is a professor and Dean of Troy University Libraries. He is a member of Troy’s Textbook Initiative Committee, whose efforts to bring OER to the University’s students have saved over $294,200 University-wide. He has published in several peer reviewed journals and has considerable experience writing and implementing grants. In 2015 the Carnegie Corporation, American Library Association, New York Times, and the New York Public Library presented him the I Love My Librarian Award for his work in public outreach. He can be reached at shafferc@troy.edu.
References
Colvard, N. B., Watson, C. E., & Park, H. (2018). The impact of open educational resources on various student success metrics. International Journal of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education, 30(2), 262-276.
Gaines, A. (2018). Capitalism and the cost of textbooks: The possibilities of open source materials. In K. Haltinner and L. Hormel (Eds.), Teaching economic inequality and capitalism in contemporary America (pp. 257-266). Retrieved from http://doi.org/10.1007/987-3-319-71141-6_22
Weller, M., de los Arcos, B., Farrow, R., Pitt, B., & McAndrew, P. (2015). The impact of OER on teaching and learning practice. Open Praxis, 7(4), 351-361.
