OpenStax (formerly OpenStax College) is a nonprofit educational technology initiative based at
Rice University
William Marsh Rice University, commonly referred to as Rice University, is a Private university, private research university in Houston, Houston, Texas, United States. Established in 1912, the university spans 300 acres.
Rice University comp ...
. Since 2012, OpenStax has created peer-reviewed,
openly licensed textbooks, which are available in free digital formats and for a low cost in print. Most books are also available in
Kindle versions on
Amazon.com and in the
iBooks Store. OpenStax's first textbook was ''College Physics'', which was published online, in print, and in iBooks in 2012. OpenStax launched OpenStax Tutor Beta in June 2017, adaptive courseware based on cognitive science principles, machine learning, and OpenStax content. However, it was announced in October 2022 that Tutor was being discontinued.
Aiming to compete with major publishers' offerings,
the project was initially funded by the
Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation
The Gates Foundation is an American private foundation founded by Bill Gates and Melinda French Gates. Based in Seattle, Washington, it was launched in 2000 and is reported to be List of wealthiest charitable foundations, the third largest char ...
, the
William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the
Michelson 20 Million Minds Foundation, and the Maxfield Foundation.
All textbook content is licensed under
Creative Commons Attribution Licenses; specifically, the books are available under the
CC BY
A Creative Commons (CC) license is one of several public copyright licenses that enable the free distribution of an otherwise copyrighted "work". A CC license is used when an author wants to give other people the right to share, use, and bui ...
license (except for Calculus, which is available under
CC BY-NC-SA), which means that instructors are able to use, adapt, and remix the content, as long as they attribute OpenStax.
In 2017, OpenStax announced that they were partnering with UK Open Textbooks to spread the use of their open content in the UK, and partnering with Katalyst Education to form OpenStax Polska, bringing Polish-language versions of select OpenStax books to universities in
Poland
Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, is a country in Central Europe. It extends from the Baltic Sea in the north to the Sudetes and Carpathian Mountains in the south, bordered by Lithuania and Russia to the northeast, Belarus and Ukrai ...
.
As of January 2024, OpenStax asserts that their products have saved $2.9 billion in education costs since 2012, and that 7 million students from 150 countries and 70 percent of higher education institutions in the US use OpenStax.
Editorial process
OpenStax textbooks follow a traditional peer review process aimed at ensuring they meet a high quality standard before publication. Textbooks are developed and peer-reviewed by educators in an attempt to ensure they are readable and accurate, meet the scope and sequence requirements of each course, are supported by instructor ancillaries, and are available with the latest technology-based learning tools. The editors do encourage reviews of the book, slides and other teaching materials. However, notwithstanding the peer-review process, the books have come under criticism for the large numbers of typos and other errors they contain.
The free, online version of OpenStax books are kept up-to-date on an ongoing basis. Instructors are encouraged to submit errata suggestions via the OpenStax website, and errata suggestions are reviewed by subject matter experts. Revisions are made when it is determined to be pedagogically necessary. New PDFs and print versions of the books are released each summer when substantial changes are present.
OpenStax's original goal was to publish openly licensed textbooks for the 25 highest-enrolled undergraduate college courses: they achieved that goal in 2016. In September 2020 they announced plans to double the number of textbooks they offer.
See also
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LibreTexts
LibreTexts (formerly called STEMHyperlibrary and ChemWiki) is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit online educational resource project. The project provides open access to its content on its website, and the site is built on the proprietary Mindtouch platform. ...
*
Open educational resources
Open educational resources (OER) are Instructional materials, teaching, learning, and research materials intentionally created and Free license, licensed to be free for the end user to own, share, and in most cases, modify. The term "OER" descr ...
*
OpenCourseWare
*
OpenStax CNX
*
Open Course Library
*
Open.Michigan
*
Rice University Press, Rice's all-digital platform based on the Connexions technology
*
Wikiversity, a Wikimedia Foundation project, devoted to learning materials and activities
Notes
External links
{{sister project, project=Wikiversity, text=
OpenStax resources on Wikiversity
OpenStax official websiteTED Talk dated 2006-02Founder Richard Baraniuk discussing Connexions
American Astronomical Society video on the OpenStax Astronomy TextbookInterview with Lead Author
Andrew Fraknoi
American educational websites
Open educational resources
Rice University
Organizations established in 2012
2012 establishments in Texas
Educational publishing companies
Educational publishing companies of the United States
Textbook publishing companies