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Textbook Options and (Free) Open Access Materials: More About Open Access

Links to free, online, peer reviewed textbooks and materials available for anyone who wants to use them.

Pros and Cons of Open Access

PROS for Readers​ and Students

  • FREE!
  • Peer reviewed 
  • Available to download anywhere you have Internet access; on desktops, phones, and tablets
  • Open Access accelerates the rate at which information is spread; you get access to the latest innovations as soon as they're published, without having to wait

PROS for Teachers

  • Students will always have access to your textbooks and course content
  • You can edit and change content without violating copyright (varies depending on platform; OTN and OpenStax allow edits)
  • Books are immediately available (no waiting on shipping)
  • Print copies are often available for a fraction of what traditional textbooks cost

PROS for Authors

  • Higher downloads and citations
  • Increased visibility for your work
  • Greater platform, greater ability to influence your field 
  • Facilitates collaboration and networking
  • Quickly fulfills grant publishing requirements

CONS

  • The number of open access textbooks can be limited, and varies across disciplines
  • Authors and publishers get paid little or nothing for their work - Although this is often the case with traditional publication methods as well
  • Finding quality, peer reviewed open access sites and resources takes time and experience

More About Open Access - Resources

Video by PHD Comics

Great OA Tools for Students, Authors, and Researchers

BioMed Central

Resources for OA funding for authors 

Hypothesis

Helps to organize research and personal notes.

Mendeley 

Free reference manager.

OpenAccessButton

Searches thousands of sources to link to free, legal, full text articles.

​Unpaywall

A browser plug-in that identifies the resource you're looking for, then checks to see whether it’s available for free anywhere on the web. A great resource for students and researchers.

Open Access publishing flow chart

Here are a few other notable OA publishers:

A publisher of open access monographs established by the libraries of more than forty liberal arts colleges.

An open access publishing program for monographs from the University of California Press.

A publisher of open access journals and books focused on critical and cultural theory.

A non-profit supported by an international library consortium that publishes open access journals.

A scholarly, peer-reviewed journal. PeerJ also has a pre-prints publication called Peer J Pre-Prints.

PLoS publishes about 10 OA, Peer-Reviewed journals, the best known of them is PLoS ONE.

An independent open access publisher that specializes in neo-traditional and non-conventional scholarly work.

Miscellaneous OA Resources

Canvas

A Learning Management System (LMS).

Community College Consortium for Open Educational Resources (OER)

A consortium of community colleges that point to resources that help faculty get started using open educational resources.

The Information Literacy User's Guide: An Open, Online Textbook

Introduces students to critical concepts of information literacy as defined for the information-infused and technology-rich environment.

MERLOT

A free and open resource designed primarily for faculty and students of higher education. Links to online learning materials are collected along with assignments and comments.

Open SUNY Textbooks

Offers a limited number of textbooks but a good example of a university run open textbook project.

ResearchBuzz

News and information about OA search engines, databases and online information collections.