An open textbook is a textbook licensed under an open license, and made available online to be freely used by students, teachers and members of the public. Many open textbooks are distributed in either print, e-book, or audio formats that may be downloaded or purchased at little or no cost.Learn More About Open Textbooks, the Student PIRGs
Part of the broader open educational resources movement,Open Education. SPARC.Free to Learn Guide by Hal Plotkin. "An Open Educational Resources Policy Development Guidebook for Community College Governance Officials." (Funded by The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation) Living document is open-licensed for iterative improvement. Creative Commons. 2010. open textbooks increasingly are seen as a solution to challenges with traditionally published textbooks, such as access and affordability concerns.Open Education Conference 2009. Interactive Open Textbook Panel Discussion. (Video, 1:02:08) Murugan Pal, CK12 Foundation; Eric Frank, Flat World Knowledge; Cable Green, WA State Board for Community and Technical Colleges; Barbara Illowsky, De Anza College; Steve Acker, Ohio State University. Open textbooks were identified in the New Media Consortium's 2010 Horizon Report as a component of the rapidly progressing adoption of open content in higher education.2010 Horizon Report, Chapter 7 Johnson, L., Levine, A., Smith, R., & Stone, S. (2010) for the New Media Consortium and the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative. Accessed Dec 23, 2010. Open books are typically distributed by open-licensed publishers or by writers themselves. A portion of the expense of college textbooks is offset by the easy access to material provided by open source textbooks. While certain open source textbooks can be used for free, others have a nominal usage fee. A digital copy of a printed book that can be read on computers, tablets, and smartphones is called an electronic book, or ebook for short.
Usage rights
The defining difference between open textbooks and traditional textbooks is that the copyright permissions on open textbooks allow the public to freely use, adapt and distribute the material. Open textbooks either reside in the public domain or are released under an open license that grants usage rights to the public so long as the author is attributed.Dramatically Bringing Down the Cost of Education with OER by the Center of American Progress.
The copyright permissions on open textbooks extend to all members of the public and cannot be rescinded.About the Licenses by Creative Commons These permissions include the right to do the following: use the textbook freely create and distribute copies of the textbook adapt the textbook by revising it or combining it with other materials
Some open licenses limit these rights to non-commercial use or require that adapted versions be licensed the same as the original.
Open licenses Some examples of open licenses are: Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) About Creative Commons Licenses Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike (CC BY-SA) Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share-Alike (CC BY-NC-SA) GNU Free Documentation License
Waivers of copyright that place materials in the public domain include: Creative Commons Public Domain Tools: CC0 (if you are the copyright holder) and the Creative Commons Public Domain Mark (to be applied to works "free of known copyright restrictions")
Affordability
Open textbooks increasingly are seen as an affordable alternative to traditional textbooks in both K-12 and higher education.Huffington Post, In The Public Interest : Open Textbooks and the Tech-Friendly Generation by Sarah Sather. Sep 30, 2010. In both cases, open textbooks offer both dramatic up-front savings and the potential to drive down traditional textbook prices through competition.Connexions. What are open textbooks? February 26, 2009. Accessed December 29, 2010.
Higher education In the United States, textbook costs increased 88% from July 2006 to July 2016. For this reason, in 2019, students were recommended to budget at least $1,230 per year for textbooks. Overall, open textbooks have been found by the Student Public Interest Research Groups (PIRGs) to offer 80% or more savings to higher education students over traditional textbooks.New Report Finds Switching To Open Textbooks Saves Students Thousands by Nicole Allen. September 30, 2010A Call for Open Textbooks by Steve Kolowich. Inside Higher Ed. October 1, 2010.The Textbook Alternative That Could Save Students $700 Per Year by Dennis Carter. eCampus News. October 7, 2010
In 2010, research commissioned by the Florida state legislature pointed to the savings potential open textbooks could secure for students.Florida Open Access Textbook Task Force Final Report submitted in fulfillment of the requirements contained in 1004.091(2) F.S. February 27, 2010. Legislative reports in Texas and North Dakota also pointed to the potential of open textbook programs to secure cost savings. State-backed initiatives began in Washington,Washington's 2-year Colleges Out to Beat High Cost of Textbooks by Katherine Long. The Seattle Times. November 7, 2010. Ohio,Ohio's Digital Textbook Project Webinar Summary by Sue Polanka. No Shelf Required: Ebooks in Libraries. Wright State University. October 25, 2010. California,Open Textbooks In California U.S. Department of Education. 2010. and Texas.Governor: Texas Should Move to Online Textbooks by Kelley Shannon (AP) in Business Week. April 7, 2010. In Canada, the province of British Columbia became the first jurisdiction to have a similar open textbook program. In subsequent years, various state, provincial, national, and institutional initiatives emerged to support creation and use of open textbooks.
Open Oregon, a state-funded initiative active since 2015, indicated in an annual report that open textbooks can not only secure significant savings for students, these savings compound over time as materials are reused. For instance, Open Oregon initially offered $52,098 in funding for open textbooks in 2015. By 2019, the program estimated that students in Oregon higher education had secured $477,409.24 in savings.
Organizations supporting creation of open textbooks cite other reasons for doing so that go beyond cost savings. In 2010, the Florida state legislature pointed to "compelling academic reasons" for using open textbooks that included: "improved quality, flexibility and access to resources, interactive and active learning experiences, currency of textbook information, broader professional collaboration, and the use of teaching and learning technology to enhance educational experiences" (OATTF, p. i). Based on survey data gathered in September 2020, Student PIRGs cited additional reasons for supporting accessible open textbooks in light of the evolving COVID-19 pandemic. They noted that, while commercial textbook prices had not continued to surge in the past year, students experiencing economic uncertainty, food shortages, and limited access to Internet were more likely to forgo or lose access to course materials. This report highlighted the economic inequalities that are further exacerbated by an educational market characterized by cost inflation and demanding technological requirements.
Research A meta-analysis of 22 studies of 100,012 students found that there were no differences between open and commercial textbooks for learning performance. Students enrolled in courses with open textbooks had a lower withdrawal rate than students enrolled in courses in commercial textbooks. Systematic reviews of open educational resources, including open textbooks, concluded that faculty and student perceptions of the quality of open textbooks was comparable to that of commercial textbooks.
Platforms Open textbooks and other open educational resources may be found on several platforms, typically organized by universities and non-profit organizations, such as MERLOT. The University of Minnesota Open Textbook library is coordinated through the Center for Open Education and is a repository of downloadable open textbooks. OpenStax is both a platform for locating open textbooks and an open textbook creator. Peer review is a common practice across platforms.
K–12 education
Research at Brigham Young University has produced a web-based cost comparison calculator for traditional and open K-12 textbooks. To use the calculator the inputs commercial textbook cost, planned replacement frequency, and number of annual textbook user count are required. A section is provided to input time requirements for adaptation to local needs, annual updating hours, labor rate, and an approximation of pages. The summary section applies an industry standard cost for print-on-demand of the adapted open textbook to provide a cost per student per year for both textbook options. A summed cost differential over the planned period of use is also calculated."Can My K-12 School Save Money with Open Textbooks?" Department of Instructional Psychology and Technology and the Center for the Improvement of Teacher Education and Schooling at Brigham Young University. Research funded by The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. 2011.
Milestones
Several organizations, publishers, and initiatives have taken a lead in furthering open textbook publishing, particularly in North America.
In early 2011, Connexions announced a series of two grants that would allow the platform to produce a total of 20 open textbooks ultimately distributed as the OpenStax collection. Initially funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the Michelson 20MM Foundation, and the Maxfield Foundation, this project expanded over an 18-month time frame to include open textbooks for Anatomy & Physiology, Sociology, Biology, Biology for non-majors, and Physics. The second phase of the OpenStax project would produce an additional 15 titles. The most expensive part of this process was image rights clearing with cleared images becoming available for reuse in even more titles."Connexions Conference 2011: Part 3 by Barbara Illowsky. February 20, 2011. As of June 2021, OpenStax indicates that their textbooks are in use in 60% of U.S. colleges and universities and 100 countries worldwide.
In February 2012, the Saylor Foundation sponsored an "Open Textbook Challenge", offering a $20,000 reward for newly written open textbooks or existing textbooks released under a CC BY license.
After its launch in 2012, the BC Open Textbook Pilot went on to win many accolades for its commitment to providing open textbooks to students in British Columbia, Canada. BCcampus was tasked with coordinating the program, whose goal was to "make higher education more accessible by reducing student cost through the use of openly licensed textbooks." BCcampus' catalog of open textbooks is widely regarded as a leading source of information about existing OER in Canada. The organization has taken the lead in educating the OER community about textbook accessibility via its Accessibility Toolkit. In 2015 and 2016, BCcampus won Creative Innovation and Open Education Excellence awards from the Open Education Consortium. In 2018, it won a SPARC Innovator Award.