Scaling the Peer Review Process for National Stem Education Digital Library Collections

STEM数字图书馆以及NSDL本身的主要目标之一是使用户能够从广泛的馆藏中识别潜在有用的数字学习材料和信息。STEM数字图书馆的教师、教师和学生用户经常会从搜索查询中获得大量结果，然后他们面临着只搜索那些服务于其教育目的的结果的挑战。STEM本科教育工作者期望并需要数字图书馆为他们提供信息和工具，以评估学习材料内容的质量，其在教学和学习中的潜在效力，其可用性和稳定性，以及这些材料对其教育需求的适应性。如何最好地开发、实施和扩大有效、高效和可靠的同行评审系统，困扰着成熟和新兴的STEM数字图书馆。被审查的内容（期刊文章vs.学习材料）和材料的目的（推进知识vs.促进学习）的差异使情况更加复杂。影响数字图书馆同行评议过程的另一个因素来自用户。从他们的角度来看，同行评议的最终目的是帮助他们选择学习材料。在这种情况下，他们对某一特定领域的知识进步或帮助作者改进他们的文章（在线期刊同行评审的目的）不感兴趣。有效的系统要求STEM数字馆藏花费大量资源来招募、培训和支持大量审稿人，这些审稿人通过应用一套标准来评估材料，这些标准需要将技术与教育学、认知科学和内容相结合的专业知识。该项目与合作伙伴，工程教育数字图书馆和健康教育访问图书馆（HEAL）合作，正在开发一种解决方案，以解决与实施和扩展NSDL馆藏同行评审系统相关的问题，即面对面培训的高成本、审稿人的保留以及审稿人无法跟上馆藏规模快速增长的步伐。这项工作建立在MERLOT同行评审过程的基础上。为了鼓励其他NSDL集合的适应性，有一个可适应的在线专业开发过程，用于实现同行和主要审查，该过程被设计为一个可适应uPortal框架的渠道（NSDL核心集成开发团队选择的软件，用于创建初始的NSDL主门户）。这个合作项目的主要成果是一个专业发展模块，用于培训同行评审人员，为NSDL馆藏（和其他馆藏）设计，以有效和高效地实施和维持其馆藏的同行评审。适应性强的模块、培训和指导流程为NSDL馆藏在实施有效和可靠的同行评审流程方面节省了大量的时间、精力和资金。

One of the primary goals of STEM digital libraries, as well as the NSDL itself, is to enable users to identify potentially useful digital learning materials and information from a wide range of collections. Faculty, instructors and student users of STEM digital libraries are often presented with numerous results from a search query where they then face the challenge of searching for only those that serve their educational purposes. STEM undergraduate educators expect and need digital libraries to provide them with the information and tools to evaluate the quality of content of learning materials, their potential efficacy in teaching and learning, their usability and stability, and the adaptability of these materials for their educational needs.How best to develop, implement and scale up effective, efficient and reliable peer review systems plagues both mature and newly developing STEM digital libraries. Differences in what is reviewed (journal articles vs. learning materials) and the purpose of the materials (advancing knowledge vs. promoting learning) help compound the situation. Another factor affecting peer review processes for digital libraries stems from users. From their standpoint, the ultimate goal of peer review is to help them select the learning materials. In this case, they are not interested in advancing knowledge in a particular field or helping authors improve their articles (the purpose of peer review for online journals). Effective systems require STEM digital collections to expend significant resources to recruit, train and support large numbers of reviewers who evaluate materials by applying a set of criteria that requires expertise in the integration of technology with pedagogy, cognitive science and content.In collaboration with its partners, NEEDS (a Digital Library for Engineering Education, and HEAL) the Health Education Access Library, this project is developing one solution to the problems associated with implementing and scaling peer review systems for NSDL collections, namely, the high costs associated with face-to-face training, retention of reviewers, and the inability of reviewers to keep pace with the rapidly increasing size of the collections. This work builds on the foundation of the MERLOT peer review process. To encourage adaptability by other NSDL collections there is an adaptable online professional development processes for implementing both peer and Premier reviews that is designed as a channel adaptable to the framework uPortal (the software selected by the NSDL-Core Integration development team to create the initial NSDL Main Portal). The main outcome of this collaborative project is a professional development module for training peer reviewers, designed for NSDL collections (and others) to effectively and efficiently implement and sustain peer review of their collections. The adaptable module, training and mentoring processes save NSDL collections significant time, effort and funds in their implementation of valid and reliable peer review processes.