The free online textbook Professor Jake Lusis uses for his mouse genetics class is the best book he could find.
Students can buy a printed copy of the book, but the microbiology, immunology and molecular genetics professor said many of his students prefer the online version....
Largely because the online textbook in his genetics class has been well-received, Lusis decided to sign a statement pledging to consider open textbooks when deciding on the most appropriate texts for his classes....
The California Public Interest Research Group, which organized the statement, announced 1,000 signatures Tuesday....
“Textbook affordability is a critical issue for today’s students, with textbook costs rising faster than inflation and tuition, textbooks can price students out of higher education,” said [Nicole Allen, textbook advocate for CALPIRG]....
Bruce Hildebrand, executive director for higher education at the Association of American Publishers, said writing a textbook takes an enormous amount of time and the association supports authors willing to donate that time by releasing free online books....
Christine Borgman, professor and presidential chair of the information studies department, signed the statement partly because she was already active in the movement for open access to academic material.
Borgman, who has written about open access in her recent book, “Scholarship in the Digital Age,” said freely available academic information is not necessarily of lower quality.
“There are some very expensive journals that don’t have very good articles in them, and then there are some free open-access journals that are among the top in their field,” she said....
“Publishers aren’t going away, and the open-access movement isn’t either,” she said.
Posted by
Peter Suber at 4/17/2008 08:44:00 AM.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
I recommend the OA tracking project (OATP) as the best way to stay on top of new OA developments. You can read the OATP feed on a blog-like web page or subscribe to it by RSS, email, or Twitter. You can also help build the feed by tagging new developments you encounter.
