Faculty using PB Publication in Promotion / Tenure Dossier

Administering Pressbooks Networks Network Manager Resources
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Hello, friends!

I hope this message finds you well or at least getting the care you need in these highly uncertain times.

I have a very practical question that came from a faculty member in our Modern Languages Department: She would like to submit her Pressbooks’ book as evidence of a publication, but was curious to know what others’ experiences have been across the community.

Have any of you had these conversations with faculty at your institutions? (Any variety of use cases would be helpful in this scenario.)

Thank you in advance.

Best,

Jim

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Hey Jim – great question. @LeighKP from Rebus recommended https://rebus.foundation/2019/12/05/tenure-promotion-office-hours-summary/ as a good starting place. My understanding is that tenure and review practices will differ from institution to institution, but that open publications (articles, monographs, etc.) can count provided they’ve been through legitimate, documented peer review processes. Creation of OER (for teaching purposes) that hasn’t been through peer review can sometimes count for tenure, but usually as service or teaching, rather than research. UBC was a pioneer in considering OER as part of their tenure and review processes. See https://sparcopen.org/news/2017/recognizing-open-tenure-promotion-ubc/ + https://er.educause.edu/blogs/2018/7/university-of-british-columbia-recognizing-open-in-promotion-and-tenure for more. @rjhangiani may know more about other similar efforts in the province these days?

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Thanks for the resources, Steel!
I’ll take a look at them and wait for others to (potentially) chime in as well!

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Saw a great recent reply to similar question elsewhere from @Abbey_Elder:

In general, I’d highlight that OER work can double as scholarship and particularly Scholarship of Teaching & Learning (SOTL) work, which has more examples in P&T:

  1. https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1118798.pdf
  2. https://lib.dr.iastate.edu/abe_eng_pubs/822/
  3. http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.623.2621&rep=rep1&type=pdf

Hope that’s helpful?

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Thanks for sharing this, Steel! I will note that two of those links go to the same document – I missed that in my first comb-through.

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OTN has a working group exploring this, as well. There are definitely institutions who have incorporated OER into RPT for teaching and service, but we are trying to figure out how to help it also be seen as scholarly work. As we have looked at various institutions’ RPT documents and definitions of scholarly work, one recurring theme is the work’s impact on the field. Being able to document wide usage would help speak to this.