Defining open

Before we start, let’s review the difference between open and closed licenses.

Open vs. closed

Open textbooks are open educational resources (OER) or instructional resources created and shared or published in ways that allow more people to access them. Open textbooks are free to the students. Open textbooks are also licensed to be freely edited or modified. They reside in the public domain — where copyrights have been waived by the copyright holder, or copyright has expired — or released by the copyright holder under an open-copyright license; both of these circumstances permit free use and repurposing by others.

The traditional textbook-publishing model assumes that the author owns the copyright for the textbook and that these rights are not shared with others. In other words, all rights are reserved, so the textbook is essentially closed. If the author owns the copyright, they can sell to a publisher the right to print and distribute their work. The conditions of this sale are typically outlined in a contract between the author and publisher.

Open textbooks are typically distributed online in multiple formats (for example, PDF or EPUB). Often it’s possible to buy a bound open textbook in a college bookstore or online at a low cost. Students can choose the best format for their budget and learning style.

Open means that everything in the open textbook, including images, is openly licensed. In addition, Oregon State’s OERU considers the right to adapt an open textbook to be integral to the definition of open. This means that the books in the Oregon State OER Collection use open licenses that allow faculty to add, remove or rearrange content.

When we use the term “open textbook”  or “openly-licensed resource” throughout this guide, we mean open textbooks that are licensed to allow for additional usage rights.

Attribution