OER: 12 Sources of Open Textbooks

(Photo credit: opensourceway)

With the State Department's announcement and posts on twitter about failed business models, I think this is a good time to revisit how to find actual free, openly licensed textbooks. There are many ways to find free, openly licensed textbooks on the internet. I have listed a dozen here, but if you are still not finding what you need, feel free to contact me. I really mean that. I think making education financially accessible to your students is just that important. Some of these resources over lap, but that is okay - you will find some of these sites easier to use than others. There are a lot of things happening in the world of open textbooks. A lot of the criticisms that you may have heard in the past are fading away as sites dedicated to the peer review and vetting of open textbooks become more prevalent. This is not the definitive list - if there is a site that you use or prefer, please post a comment and share.

1. Saylor Foundation
Each of the books listed below is freely available for download, online reading, and sharing, under one of various open licenses.

2. OpenStax
"OpenStax College is a nonprofit organization committed to improving student access to quality learning materials. Our free textbooks are developed and peer-reviewed by educators to ensure they are readable, accurate, and meet the scope and sequence requirements of your course."

3. MERLOT
"Putting educational innovations into practice. Find peer reviewed online teaching and learning materials. Share advice and expertise about education with expert colleagues. Be recognized for your contributions to quality education."

4. College Open Textbooks
If you run into any links to Flat World Knowledge textbooks here, be sure to go to the Saylor Foundation website to get free access to those titles. "College Open Textbooks has peer-reviewed more than 100 open textbooks for use in community college courses and identified more than 550: College Open Textbooks has already peer-reviewed several new open textbooks for use in community college courses and identified more than 250 others for consideration. Open textbooks are freely available for use without restriction and can be downloaded or printed from web sites and repositories."

5. Connexions
"Connexions is a dynamic digital educational ecosystem consisting of an educational content repository and a content management system optimized for the delivery of educational content. Connexions is one of the most popular open education sites in the world. Its more than 17,000 learning objects or modules in its repository and over 1000 collections (textbooks, journal articles, etc.) are used by over 2 million people per month."

6. Textbook Revolution
"Textbook Revolution is a student-run site dedicated to increasing the use of free educational materials by teachers and professors. We want to get these materials into classrooms. On this site you'll find links and reviews of textbooks and select educational resources. Some of the books are PDF files, others are viewable online as e-books, or some are simply web sites containing course or multimedia content."

7. Community College Consortium for Open Education Resources
"The Open Educational Resources (OER) movement encourages the creation and reuse of free, high-quality content and open source learning systems to replace expensive and proprietary systems. By promoting OER, community colleges can create sustainable academic resources for students and provide collaborative professional development opportunities for faculty."

8. Boundless Textbooks
"Boundless is pleased to offer open introductory textbooks in the following subjects. These textbooks are published under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike (CC BY-SA) license, which means anyone is welcome to quote, mashup, reuse, and republish any portion of any book, anywhere, so long as proper citation is given."

9. Wikibooks
Wikibooks is an "open-content textbooks collection that anyone can edit" with over 2,500 open-content textbooks.

10. Open Culture
A meta-collection of free textbooks.

11. Bookboon
"Online Textbooks for Free Bookboon's free online textbooks for students are focused and to the point. They are all written by highly respected professors from top universities in the world and cover topics such as economics, statistics, IT, engineering and natural science."

12. Directory of Open Access Books
"The primary aim of DOAB is to increase discoverability of Open Access books. Academic publishers are invited to provide metadata of their Open Access books to DOAB. Metadata will be harvestable in order to maximize dissemination, visibility and impact. Aggregators can integrate the records in their commercial services and libraries can integrate the directory into their online catalogues, helping scholars and students to discover the books. The directory will be open to all publishers who publish academic, peer reviewed books in Open Access and should contain as many books as possible, provided that these publications are in Open Access and meet academic standards."

Related articles

• 8 Exemplary Open Textbooks and The Meaning Beyond Bringing Cost Down (classroom-aid.com)
• Tablets to Replace Textbooks in New York Public Schools? (the-digital-reader.com)
• OpenStax announces first iPad version of its free, online textbooks (insidehighered.com)
• Open Textbooks: Community and Sustainability (cain.blogspot.com)

Promoting an Open Culture with Open Access Week

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Open Access Week is upon us and this is a very important part of the OER equation. Quality OER is going to have to start with quality open research. There are so many concerns outside of the OER community that Open Access Week can address:

• Where is the research going to come from for OERs and open text books?
• How do we determine if OER and open research are "credible"?
• How do we address publication and tenure issues with OER?

What is Open Access Week? "Open Access Week, a global event now entering its sixth year, is an opportunity for the academic and research community to continue to learn about the potential benefits of Open Access, to share what they’ve learned with colleagues, and to help inspire wider participation in helping to make Open Access a new norm in scholarship and research."


Open Access in research can ensure the widest dissemination and  use of that research. I would like to see institutions supporting research in such a way that closed options (commercial journals) are less attractive. OERs become "credible" and "reputable" when the materials used to create them come from respected open journals. The default for research should always be open. Our support will make them reputable!

Related articles

• Open Access Week Begins Today (infojustice.org)
• Open Access Week 2012 (chronicle.com)
• Open Practices for the Connected Researcher (ukwebfocus.wordpress.com)
• Open Access Week October 22-28, 2012 Everywhere (researchsupporthub.northampton.ac.uk)

OER Books & Journals: Don't forget Europe!

Image via WikipediaI came across a great site in my morning reading: OAPEN (Open Access Publishing in European Networks) which "is a collaborative initiative to develop and implement a sustainable Open Access publication model for academic books in the Humanities and Social Sciences. The OAPEN Library aims to improve the visibility and usability of high quality academic research by aggregating peer reviewed Open Access publications from across Europe." I was there this morning looking at a great article on new translations Dante. That is the occupational hazard here - I find far too many interesting things to read! A lot of this material is in English. I am particularly impressed with their focus on community which I feel is the most important aspect of open education resources and open textbooks, the community behind them. Also, the quality of the work is excellent.

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Peru: Access to the internet is a fundamental human right

Image via Wikipedia

This is what we should really be talking about when we are still addressing issues of "digital divide." The full Peruvian House approved a bill that declares as a fundamental right and free unrestricted access to the services of Internet . The same proposal provides for the massification of broadband service, especially in rural areas and places of preferential social interest.

APRA lawmaker Mauricio Mulder was the one who drove in the last minute of the debate that network access is unrestricted and free, and stated that this proposal was endorsed by the Executive.

Therefore, the chairman of the Committee on Transport, Yaneth Cajahuanca (Nationalist Party ), considered as approved will not be noticed, but adopted by the Executive. Freely interpreted it would mean that people stop paying rates, but will not solve the infrastructure for broadband.

He explained that the main purpose of the adopted is to increase coverage of telecommunication backbone networks, high-capacity nationwide and encourage investment in fiber optic networks and service delivery of broadband communications.

According to the Ministry of Transportation and Communications (MTC), there is a 3% penetration of broadband connections, a rate that leaves us far behind in comparison with neighboring countries.

At the request of Congressman Yonhy Lescano (AP) 28900 Act was amended the Investment in Telecom (Fitel), in order that the resources of that body come from, among others, 1% of revenue billed and reported by telecommunications operating companies. The current standard builds on revenue billed and collected, which is a lower amount.

Cajahuanca lawmaker said in that 1% is also included billing for cable television, not before contemplated.

He noted that the Fitel will no longer be an administrative body, it will become a sectoral technical body, so to replace Pro Investment concessions delivery of broadband to expedite the process.

Related articles

• Broadband fund for rural areas (lv.com)
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Open Access Week

Image via WikipediOPen 
Open Access Week is happening  Oct. 18 - 22. I am particularly interested in it because it is a chance to hear leaders in the field of open education resources, such as Wayne Mackintosh, the director of the OER Foundation, facilitate free webinars. It looks like an interesting schedule.

"Open Access Week, a global event now entering its fourth year, is an opportunity for the academic and research community to continue to learn about the potential benefits of Open Access, to share what they’ve learned with colleagues, and to help inspire wider participation in helping to make Open Access a new norm in scholarship and research.

“Open Access” to information – the free, immediate, online access to the results of scholarly research, and the right to use and re-use those results as you need – has the power to transform the way research and scientific inquiry are conducted. It has direct and widespread implications for academia, medicine, science, industry, and for society as a whole.

Open Access (OA) has the potential to maximize research investments, increase the exposure and use of published research, facilitate the ability to conduct research across available literature, and enhance the overall advancement of scholarship. Research funding agencies, academic institutions, researchers and scientists, teachers, students, and members of the general public are supporting a move towards Open Access in increasing numbers every year. Open Access Week is a key opportunity for all members of the community to take action to keep this momentum moving forward."

Related articles

• Open Access Week (openaccessweek.org)
• What Is To Be Done? | Peer to Peer Review (libraryjournal.com)
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Open Access Research

Image via Wikipedia

Open Research

In these days of budget cuts, free, open access to academic research is more important than ever. Cable Green put up a link to a video that I want to share here as well along with some resources and tips for accessing open research. College of the Redwoods had to cut some journal databases from their library budget. Publishers need to know that this is going to basically backfire on them. Technology is changing the way that we access information and there is no room in education for profiteers! Why aren't we boycotting? The students need to get involved in this: they are paying more and more for education and getting less and less.

Open Access 101, from SPARC from Karen Rustad on Vimeo.

Open Research Organizations

Right to Research
SPARC

Open Research Journals, Repostories, and Search Tools

• Journals
  • The Directory of Open Access Journals lists more than 2,800 journals that provide free access to the full text of their articles. You can search for a specific journal or browse by subject area.
  • The SPARC Publisher Partner Program features non-profit organizations that are pursuing innovative business models to provide affordable, if not open access, to peer-reviewed research.
• Subject repositories: These archives provide open access to articles by scholars in particular fields. Some only include articles with free, full-text access, while others also include articles with only an abstract. They may also include theses, conference presentations, working papers, or other types of scholarly content. This is a sample list.
  • openDOAR: an authoritative directory of academic open access repositories. As well as providing a simple repository list, OpenDOAR lets you search for repositories or search repository contents. http://www.opendoar.org/
  • arXiv: Physics, mathematics, computer science, quantitative biology and statistics.http://arxiv.org/
  • CogPrints: Cognitive sciences, especially psychology, neuroscience, and linguistics.http://cogprints.org/
  • ERIC (Education Resources Information Center): Education. http://www.eric.ed.gov/
  • PubMed Central: Biomedical and life sciences. http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/
  • SSRN (Social Science Research Network): Social sciences, especially law, political science, economics, and business. http://www.ssrn.com/
• Search tools
  • OAIster is a tool to search archives compliant with the Open Archives Initiative metadata standard. This can include open-access journals, institutional and subject repositories, as well as other digital archives, which may include educational or historical content in addition to scholarly journal articles.http://www.oaister.org/
  • The Directory of Open Access Journals also includes a tool to search the content of some journals listed. http://www.doaj.org/

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