Friday, May 10, 9:45-10:45am
Room: Canfor Policy Room (1600)
The Faculty Experience – Creating an Open Textbook on Equity and Design: Outcomes and Challenges
Kristine Miller, Ph.D., University of Minnesota; Kristi Jensen, University of Minnesota LIbraries
Description: Creating a textbook is a time consuming endeavor requiring support from numerous experts throughout the process both in the traditional publishing environment and in the developing open textbook publishing sphere. Choosing to publish an open textbook over a traditional publisher may be motivated by several factors: the ability to more quickly bring a publication to press and update its content, the allowance of complete control over content as opposed to meeting the need to modify content to make a book more marketable, the desire to distribute content as widely as possible including to those without access to academic resources or systems. Providing “all” students with the content on the first day of class can also be a strong motivation for faculty concerned with equitable access to information for the students in their classes.
Once the open textbook model has been selected, new issues and opportunities arise. My experience creating an open textbook led to several questions for the larger community. This presentation will engage the audience through interactive activities on the following questions:
How do we determine when an open textbook is “good enough”? When is the book acceptable from a production perspective? From a scholarly perspective?
How do we build in a robust but efficient peer review process?
Are there other ways beyond peer review that can demonstrate the quality and credibility of a new text to others who are skeptical of an alternative publishing process?
How do we make these new publications into a “platform” for scholarly conversations but not lose editorial control?
How do we track a work’s use beyond pageviews? How do we know other faculty or community members are using it?
How do we find funding to provide for frequent updates (e.g., every 6 months)?
Library Publishing and Open Educational Resources: Challenges and Opportunities for Teachers
Celia Regina de Oliveira Rosa, Universidade de São Paulo (USP); Teresa Cardoso, Universidade Aberta de Portugal (UAB-PT)
Description: The participation of libraries in the processes of publication of monographs in the humanities and the social sciences is a growing phenomenon of dissemination and access to academic-scientific communication triggered in universities, establishing library publishing by practice and expanding it in the search for innovative solutions of cost-effective for authors in those institutions. The performance of editorial activities often adds to the expertise of professional editors from the institution press itself, or from librarians who need to build up such characteristics. The model supported by OA and complemented by CC licenses presents challenges to the institutions besides the development and sustainability of book-oriented library publishing, namely composition, high cost of editorial production and the distinctive distribution chain, which also makes it possible to trade content in another format. This paper intends to present a set of features needed to start this service in institutions that have not yet adopted it, like fostering an approach between teachers and librarians, for example through meetings or training. Thus, it is relevant to reflect on the opportunities and challenges that those different educational actors face, namely teachers. In this context, OER emerge as key elements, aligned not only with the principles of OA but also those of Open Science. OER have been perceived as “teaching, learning and research materials in any medium, digital or otherwise, that reside in the public domain or have been released under an open license that permits no-cost access, use, adaptation and redistribution by others with no or limited restrictions. Open licensing is built within the existing framework of intellectual property rights as defined by relevant international conventions and respects the authorship of the work.” (UNESCO, 2012:1) Therefore, OER can contribute to address the topics of quality, innovation, access, cost and dissemination, among others, posed by library publishing.