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Concept
Open textbook
Summary
An open textbook is a textbook licensed under an open license, and made available online to be freely used by students, teachers and members of the public. Many open textbooks are distributed in either print, e-book, or audio formats that may be downloaded or purchased at little or no cost.
Part of the broader open educational resources movement, open textbooks increasingly are seen as a solution to challenges with traditionally published textbooks, such as access and affordability concerns. Open textbooks were identified in the New Media Consortium's 2010 Horizon Report as a component of the rapidly progressing adoption of open content in higher education.
The defining difference between open textbooks and traditional textbooks is that the copyright permissions on open textbooks allow the public to freely use, adapt and distribute the material. Open textbooks either reside in the public domain or are released under an open license that grants usage rights to the public so long as the author is attributed.
The copyright permissions on open textbooks extend to all members of the public and cannot be rescinded. These permissions include the right to do the following:
use the textbook freely
create and distribute copies of the textbook
adapt the textbook by revising it or combining it with other materials
Some open licenses limit these rights to non-commercial use or require that adapted versions be licensed the same as the original.
Some examples of open licenses are:
Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY)
Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike (CC BY-SA)
Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share-Alike (CC BY-NC-SA)
GNU Free Documentation License
Waivers of copyright that place materials in the public domain include:
Creative Commons Public Domain Tools: CC0 (if you are the copyright holder) and the Creative Commons Public Domain Mark (to be applied to works "free of known copyright restrictions")
Open textbooks increasingly are seen as an affordable alternative to traditional textbooks in both K-12 and higher education.
Official source
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