What Is MERLOT's Peer Review Process?

Updated

MERLOT uses a volunteer peer review process to evaluate a subset of the materials in its collection, and the results are published on the site so you can judge quality before you adopt a resource. The process applies to individual learning materials submitted to the MERLOT Collection, not to every item you will find through search. If you need a quick answer: look for a material's peer review information on its MERLOT page, and treat reviewed materials as the ones that have passed an external quality check by discipline experts.

How the review is organized

MERLOT is described as a curated collection led by an international community of educators, learners, and researchers. Peer review sits inside that community structure: reviewers are volunteers drawn from the academic discipline communities, and their work is coordinated through the Editorial Boards that correspond to MERLOT's discipline portals.

The site lists these discipline areas for browsing, which is also where review expertise is organized:

  • Arts
  • Business
  • Education
  • Health Sciences
  • Humanities
  • Mathematics and Statistics
  • Science and Technology
  • Social Sciences
  • Workforce Development

Academic Support Services form a separate portal category. A material is normally reviewed within the discipline it belongs to, so the reviewer's subject background matches the content.

What reviewers evaluate

MERLOT's peer review is built around a set of quality criteria rather than a simple pass/fail impression. The public entry point for this is the Peer Review Information page linked from the site's About section. In practice, a review considers whether the material is:

  • Quality of content — accurate, current, and relevant to the stated subject and level.
  • Potential effectiveness as a teaching tool — whether it supports learning objectives and can be integrated into instruction.
  • Ease of use — how readily a teacher or learner can navigate and use it without unnecessary obstacles.

Each reviewed material receives a review that discusses these dimensions, so you get reasoning, not just a score.

What reviewed materials receive

Materials that complete the process can be recognized through MERLOT Awards, which the site lists alongside Peer Review Information under its About section. The practical signal for a user is the same either way: a reviewed material carries published review information on its MERLOT page, and award-winning materials carry an additional distinction.

This matters when you are choosing between several resources on the same topic. A reviewed material gives you a documented expert opinion; an unreviewed material may still be excellent, but you are relying on your own judgment or on other users' bookmark collections and learning exercises.

How to check whether a material has been reviewed

  1. Search or browse to the material. Use Search with the Materials option, or go through Browse by Discipline.
  2. Open the material's detail page in the MERLOT Collection.
  3. Look for the peer review section on that page. If a review exists, it will present the reviewers' evaluation; if not, the material simply has no published peer review.
  4. Cross-check the Peer Review Information page under About MERLOT for how the process and criteria are described, and the MERLOT Awards page for recognized materials.

The expected result is that you can tell, before adopting a resource, whether an external expert has assessed it and what they found.

Common points to keep in mind

  • Not everything is reviewed. MERLOT hosts a large collection (the site reports 111,556 learning resources), and peer review covers a portion of it. Absence of a review is not a negative verdict.
  • Reviews are volunteer-produced. They come from community members in the discipline, so coverage varies by field and by how active a discipline community is.
  • Reviews are a selection aid, not a substitute for your own check. Read the review against your own course context, since criteria like ease of use depend on your learners and platform.
  • Membership is not required to read reviews. Browsing the collection and viewing review information is part of the public site; creating an account is presented as free and is aimed at contributing materials, joining communities, and using creation tools.

If your goal is to pick trustworthy teaching materials quickly, filter your attention toward materials that show peer review information or a MERLOT Award, then read the review text to see whether the reviewers' reasons match your needs.