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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

After participating in the Council of Australian University Librarians (CAUL) Open Educational Resources Collective for the Collective’s duration from 2022-2025, Curtin Library has launched an OER platform via Pressbooks.

Curtin Open Books is a platform for adapting, creating, and hosting OERs created by Curtin staff, allowing our experts to create and publish independent eBooks that are accessible to all through Creative Commons licensing.

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 according to an agreed-upon timeline with the Library. 
  • Access training and documentation from the Library and Pressbooks. 
  • Use Pressbooks as an open access publishing platform free of charge. 

 The Library will: 

  • Provide access to the Pressbooks platform, including hosting costs
  • Check in regularly to support progress
  • 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
    • Identifying suitable candidates for peer review (as required)

Prospective authors should be aware that the open textbook publishing workflow is intensive and should refer to the CAUL OER collective publishing workflow for more information.

Expressions of interest for the program should be emailed to Library Help.

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.