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Home > Library > About > Open textbooks

Open textbooks

What are Open Educational Resources?

UNESCO describes Open Educational Resources (OERs) as “learning, teaching and research materials in any format and medium that reside in the public domain or are under copyright that have been released under an open license, that permit no-cost access, re-use, re-purpose, adaptation and redistribution by others.”

CAUL Open Educational Resources Collective

The Library is participating in the Council of Australian University Librarians (CAUL) Open Educational Resources Collective, which provides a shared open textbook publishing platform (Pressbooks).  

During 2023 the Library has access to Pressbooks and can publish up to two open textbooks.

In 2022, grants were awarded for two open textbook projects at Curtin and these will begin to be available in the first quarter of 2023. Two other projects are also underway.

Purpose 

To provide Curtin authors with a new online platform option for publishing their open textbooks, as well as build their knowledge and skills with open educational resources. 

This program is part of the Library’s broader strategic objective to support the adoption of open practices in learning and teaching. 

Program participation 

Participating authors will: 

  • Commit to making part or all of their open textbook published through Pressbooks by February 2024, subject to the participation criteria. 
  • Join the Community of Practice for Authors. Learn from others, share ideas and find opportunities to collaborate.  
  • Access training and documentation from the Library, the Collective, and Pressbooks. 
  • Use Pressbooks as an open access publishing platform free of charge. 
  • Have the opportunity to apply for an open textbook grant, with funding to be used for any purpose related to your open textbook. 25 x $1,000 grants are available across the Collective. 

 The Library will: 

  • Participate in the Community of Practice for Authors.
  • Provide guidance on:
    • Registering identifiers (ORCID, DOI, ISBN, etc)
    • Copyright, Creative Commons and clearing permissions 
    • Style guides, referencing and attribution 
    • MARC record creation and metadata support 
    • Deposit to the National Library and espace 
    • Tracking impact 
  • Provide support with:
    • the Pressbooks platform
    • Accessibility requirements 
    • Multimedia  
    • Graphic design
    • Marketing

Participants should be aware that the open textbook publishing workflow is intensive and should refer to the CAUL OER collective publishing workflow for more information. Read our summary of the Program for Curtin authors. 

Expressions of interest for the program should be emailed to Claire Murphy, Manager Learning Success.  

Further information on OERs

The Library can provide support if you want to find and re-use Open Educational Resources for your unit readings – contact Library Help for more information.