Library Research Guides: Topic: Open Access and Copyright: Open Textbooks

What is an Open Textbook?

An open textbook is an openly-licensed textbook offered online by its author(s). The open license sets open textbooks apart from traditional textbooks by allowing users to read online, download, or print the book at no additional cost.

For a textbook to be considered open, it must be licensed in a way that grants a baseline set of rights to users that are less restrictive than its standard copyright. A license or list of permissions must be clearly stated by the author.

Generally, the minimum baseline rights allow users at least the following:

to use the textbook without compensating the author
to copy the textbook, with appropriate credit to the author
to distribute the textbook non-commercially
to shift the textbook into another format (such as digital or print)

Many authors also grant rights such as:

to add, remove or alter content in the textbook, often on the condition that derivative works must have the same license
to copy and distribute the textbook without giving credit to the author to use the textbook commercially

Excerpt from Open Access Textbooks http://www.openaccesstextbooks.org/model/appendixA.html.

Open Textbook Criteria

Criteria for Evaluating Open Textbooks:

Open Textbooks

Lumen Learning
The Lumen team brings your institution deep expertise in the adoption and effective use of open educational resources (OER), design of highly effective online and technology-enhanced instruction, learning data analysis with a focus on improving outcomes, and community collaboration.

Search Open Textbooks:

OpenStaxCollege
OpenStax offers free, open-source, peer-reviewed textbooks for college courses. The selection is small right now, but growing. This site not only offers textbooks, but also the learning resources to go with it. These include: test banks, assignments, PowerPoint slides and more.
SUNY
Open SUNY Textbooks is an open access textbook publishing initiative established by State University of New York libraries and supported by SUNY Innovative Instruction Technology Grants
MERLOT
California State University -Find open resources on course materials related Subject or Topic.
Open Textbooks Library
Open textbooks are textbooks that have been funded, published, and licensed to be freely used, adapted, and distributed. These books have been reviewed by faculty from a variety of colleges and universities to assess their quality. These books can be downloaded for no cost, or printed at low cost. All textbooks are either used at multiple higher education institutions; or affiliated with an institution, scholarly society, or professional organization.
Saylor Academy
OER Commons
The Open Education Consortium
(easy to use SEARCH BOX) The Open Education Consortium is a non-profit, social benefit organization registered in the United States and operating worldwide.
Galileo
Easy interface to find textbooks - Open Learning Materials brings together open educational resources throughout the University System of Georgia, including open textbooks and ancillary materials.
California State University Project
Find Open Textbooks by ISBN# or by Topic. Start Here!
AIM Textbooks
American Institute of Mathematics
BC Open Textbook Project
Free open textbooks for courses in arts, sciences, humanities and business.
College Open Textbooks
A comprehensive listing of Open Textbooks that cover subjects from Anthropology to Statistics and everything in between. You can even see which colleges have adopted textbooks by looking at their list of Adoptions.
Flat World Knowledge
A large collection of open textbooks that cover many subjects from Accounting to Sociology and everything in between. This resource allows you to adopt and then modify textbooks to meet your needs. Some books include supplements such as powerpoint presentations, instructor notes, and test generators. **SPECIAL NOTE** FlatWorld Knowledge recently went to a pay-for model. The books are still less-expensive than traditional textbooks; however, they do require student payment.
Score
A wide variety of math textbooks created by the faculty at Scottsdale Community College. You have to download the PDF to see the full-text.
University of Minnesota's Open Textbook Catalog
Use this catalog to search for textbooks that are "openly licensed, complete, and suitable for adoption outside the author's institution." Textbook subjects include: Accounting & Finance, Business, Computer Science, Economics, General Education, Humanities & Language, Math, Natural & Physical Science, and Social Sciences.
NOBA (Field of Psychology)
The Diener Education Fund (DEF) is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization founded with the mission of re-imagining higher education to better serve the changing needs of students and professors. The focus of the DEF is on making information -- especially of the type found in textbooks -- widely available to people of all backgrounds. This mission is embodied in the Noba Project.
Teaching Commons
The Teaching Commons showcases high-quality open educational resources from leading colleges and universities and makes them available to educators and students around the world.
Open Math Textbooks
American Institute of Mathematics
DOAB
Directory of Open Access Books
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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.

Open eBooks

Open Library
This service is an extension of the Internet Archive. It's intended purpose is to catalog every book in the world; however, it also links to the full-text of those that are in the public domain. Again, great primary source materials.

Search Open eBooks:

Project Gutenberg
36,000 eBooks that are now in the public domain because their copyrights have expired. These are particularly useful for classic literature and other humanities and social sciences courses. Great primary source material.
DOAB
Directory of Open Access Books-The Directory of Open Access Books is a service of OAPEN Foundation. The OAPEN Foundation is an international initiative dedicated to Open Access monograph publishing, based at the National Library in The Hague