Research Guides: OER Publishing Resources: Platforms and Publishing Communities

Pressbooks

Pressbooks is VCU Libraries' main OER publishing platform. It is a WordPress-based online platform and can be used to create monographs, open textbooks, or other open educational resources, either by adapting existing resources or starting a new project from scratch. Pressbooks supports embedded video, audio, accessible math notation, and H5P to include interactive learning activities and quizzes.

Key Features

Easy to use online book writing software provided by the VCU Libraries
Free for current VCU faculty and staff
Lets you create online and downloadable (PDF, ePub, etc) books
Allows for authoring directly in the platform or easy import from Word
Accommodates multiple people working on the same book, with different roles and permissions
Allows you to easily apply an open license to your book or to individual chapters and clearly display them

VCU Libraries Pressbooks is primarily intended for the creation of openly licensed course materials. Libraries staff provide support for faculty and staff who are using Pressbooks for teaching and learning-related publications. In addition to course materials, Pressbooks may also be used for other open access monograph publishing projects. VCU faculty and staff can request the creation of a Pressbooks book.

To create a book, please submit a request through the VCU Pressbooks Book Request Form.

Other Platforms and Repositories

RamPages
A VCU-hosted WordPress site, where faculty and students can publish academic websites. VCU faculty and staff can create a site. Supported by the VCU Online.
VCU Scholars Compass, Open and Affordable Course Content at VCU Collection
A VCU publishing platform that can provide wide and stable access to VCU instructors’ open educational resources, along with statistics on their use. Recommended for storing preservation copies of textbooks and for standalone teaching materials like syllabi and slide decks.
Open Author from OER Commons
Authoring platform where instructors can create courses, units, lessons, activities and presentations. On the platform, authors design and write the resource, tag it to aid in discoverability, select a use license, and publish the resource.
Open Textbook Library
The Open Textbook Library is a comprehensive database for open textbooks. Each entry contains a brief description, a table of contents, licensing information, and link(s) to the resource in all available formats, such as PDF, online, and print. All are welcome to submit to the library using the "submit" tab on the website. Criteria for inclusion are: 1. all content must be openly licensed, with no no-derivative (CC ND) licenses; 2. must be available as a complete portable file (e.g. PDF); 3. must be in use at multiple higher education institutions or affiliated with a higher education institution, scholarly society, or professional organization; and 4. textbook must be original. Additional details provided on the submission page.
MERLOT
MERLOT is a collection thousands of free and openly licensed resources with 20 different material types, including assignments, case studies, textbooks, quizzes, and more. All are welcome to submit a resource, although a free account is required.

Publishing Communities

REBUS Community
An online community and platform for collaborative authoring, copy editing, proofreading, and reviewing of open textbooks.