Improving transparency, consistency and efficiency of ecotoxicological teaching: development of an open online textbook Environmental Toxicology

Although several textbooks are available, teaching environmental toxicology in general seems to suffer from a lack of a well-elaborated, up-to-date and consistent textbook that covers all aspects of the field. As a consequence, every university is developing its own training materials in addition to a textbook, but only little of this material is available online. And if materials are online, they are not consistent, lack novelty or do not cover the entire field. A Dutch consortium therefore took the initiative to develop an open online textbook on Environmental Toxicology that should cover the field in its full width, including aspects of environmental chemistry, ecotoxicology, toxicology and risk assessment. The initiative is sponsored by the Netherlands Ministry of Education. The project aims at developing an online open access book on Environmental Toxicology that is useful for training at BSc, MSc and higher levels. The book will be designed in a modular way, each module having a clear training goal/attainment level and flagged with a number of keywords. The book will also contain tools for self-study and training, like exercises and questions. With the book, we aim at improving quality, continuity and transparency of the education in environmental toxicology. We also want to make sure that fundamental insights on fate and effects of chemicals gained in the past are combined with recent approaches of effect assessment and molecular analysis of mechanisms causing toxicity. To guarantee quality of the book and associated training materials, we aim at having 1-2 authors for each module and also 1-2 reviewers from outside the team of authors. In addition, an advisory board will be involved in supervising the project, as well as educational advisors, while the project team will serve as an editorial board. The project team, consisting of environmental toxicologists and chemists from six Dutch universities, does not possess all expertise to cover the width of the field. We therefore solicit contributions from as many colleagues as possible from within the SETAC community. With that, we hope we can produce a book that is written and supported by SETAC, that is covering the entire field, and is useful for training within e.g. the SETAC Europe Certified Risk Assessor (CRA) programme. The publication as an open online book will allow continuous updating of the book, providing a possible role of SETAC in sustaining the book