Publish open resources

Open access publishing

Do you want to contribute to open educational practice by publishing your own open textbook? Or perhaps you’d like to adapt an existing open textbook to make it more relevant to your students?

The Library can facilitate academic authors wanting to publish an open textbook on the Pressbooks platform.

We will only facilitate open textbook publishing for resources being created for use in a current, or future, University of Adelaide course. Priority will be given to proposed projects intended to replace current textbooks that are expensive or restrictive for students to access.

As a member of the Open Educational Resources (OER) Collective, facilitated by the Council of Australian University Librarians, we can provide:

  • What the Library will do to support academic authors
    • Provide access to one of our limited spots on Pressbooks (2 new places available per year).
    • Share information about grants and other OER publishing opportunities.
    • Provide onboarding and general advice in using the OER Collective Publishing Workflow.
    • Provide general copyright advice and guidance, including the basics of Creative Commons licensing, and guidance on processing copyright clearances.
    • Share Pressbooks support resources for technical support in using the platform.
    • Provide general advice and support in the discovery and use of openly licensed resources.
    • Facilitate the peer-review process by sharing draft textbooks with reviewers (identified by the academic author) and returning feedback to the author.
    • Connect academic authors with networking and professional development opportunities, including local and national communities of practice.
    • Store a copy of the open textbook in the University’s digital repository, Adelaide Research & Scholarship (AR&S).
    • Upon publication, promote open textbooks through the Library’s regular communications channels and through the OER Collective’s promotional channels.
    • Assess open textbooks for final approval to publish and make public through Pressbooks.

  • What academic authors will do
    • Coordinate the project and ensure you are following best practice by following all 7 stages of the OER Collective Publishing Workflow.
    • Ensure you are complying with copyright, accessibility, quality control, and peer review requirements.
    • Ensure you have the rights to use all content and media in the open textbook, including permission to publish under a Creative Commons license any material you have created for teaching purposes while employed at the University of Adelaide, per the University’s Intellectual Property and Open Access policies.
    • Lead or delegate the design, creation, proofreading, and copyediting of the textbook’s structure, content, media, and/or digital learning objects.
    • Seek the Library’s advice and guidance to ensure you are following best practice for open textbook publishing.
    • Engage with local and national communities of practice to share and learn from colleagues also publishing open educational resources.
    • Provide the Library with regular status updates about the open textbook’s progress and intended publishing date.

 

While the academic author will lead and coordinate the planning, design, creation, and quality control of their open textbook project, the Library must provide final publishing approval to make the textbook public on Pressbooks and reserves the right to reject a publishing request if the textbook does not meet certain minimum requirements, including:

  • evidence of copyright compliance.
  • appropriate academic referencing.
  • meeting accessibility guidelines.
  • having gone through peer review.

    If you are interested in publishing an open textbook, email the Library's Academic Liaison team. A member of the team will then organise a meeting with you to discuss your project idea. Please include the following information in your email:

    • A summary of your idea for an open textbook.
    • What University of Adelaide course the textbook is intended to be used in.
    • If it's intended to replace a current textbook, let us know what textbook it will be replacing.