5 ms·

I'm genuinely astounded that there is not more of a movement towards open source style text books, that accept contributions (e.g. chapters) from reputable acad

I'm genuinely astounded that there is not more of a movement towards open source style text books, that accept contributions (e.g. chapters) from reputable academics from around the world. I understand that there is a huge amount of money involved, but surely the only stakeholders who benefit are: 1) The publishers, for obvious reasons 2) The authors, as they may get a healthy sum of money for writing a given text book. 3) (possibly) the teachers, if they get bribed into using a particular book in their curriculum. Lets forget about the publishers, because they are for-profit businesses who do not have the students best interest at heart. We'll also forget about the teachers, because this type of bribing is not common in my experience (teachers I know tend to go for what they already know, rather than the new shiny book which came to them in the mail). Also, we can presume that teachers are not in the business of squeezing every last dollar out of their students. As for the authors, I don't have an issue with people making money by writing text books. I know a few academics and industry people who are able to pursue more interesting goals because they have money coming in from books they've written. BUT THIS IS THE TINY MINORITY. Of all of the academics who would be capable of writing a chapter for, e.g. an introductory programming book, I would randomly estimate that only 0.1% of them have written a text book that is used in universities. If another 5% of them got together and contributed to an open source text book on the topic, that was liberally licensed and free for students to obtain and distribute, then why should we not embrace that? I understand that "getting your name out there" is not motivation enough for doing such things [0]. However, surely just doing it for the good of education and teaching is motive enough? Every now and again I see books come up on hacker news which seem like quite good resources (recently it was a cryptography book, another time it was a link to a github repo for a specific field of mathematics). It would be great if these projects could take off, and become the bibles for their relevant areas. And if a particular academic institution disagrees with the teaching of the book, don't go out and prescribe expensive text books to your students. Rather, fork the (e.g. CC-licensed) book that they are not happy with, and change it. Or better yet, submit a pull request, discuss the issues with the maintainers, and hopefully resolve the issue amicably. It just astounds me that this is not a thing. [0] - This occurs a lot in discussions about how companies such as Google try to get artwork from people at zero cost, citing that the artist will get "exposure".

lebek 13y ago
I spent the last 4 years at university and digital textbooks are almost never prescribed because students like hard copies. Your argument that educational establishments don't stand to benefit much financially from traditional textbooks is probably true, but not really the issue.
- pserwylo 13y ago
  You are absolutely correct. I guess the answer would be that if such books were, e.g. CC licensed, then hard copies would be able to be printed. Given the prevailence of self publishing firms available, one would hope there is a market for text book publishers who compete on the printing price alone. Such companies needn't even be publishers themselves, but rather a middleman which makes use of self publishing services.
singold 13y ago
THIS In my country there is currently a debate because we used to have a relatively big "industry" of photocopied textbooks because of the high prices of books. Some weeks or months ago, the police closed a lot of this places that photocopied books (mostly in front of the law school oh the irony), and now, nobody wants to photocopy books. I got really angry (not because I photocopied books, I have most of my book in pdf) but because the state university (the biggest and for some the best) likes to talk about how "anyone" can study for free (as in beer ;) but nobody talks about the huge bill of books you have if you buy them legally. I thought about some kind of wiki-like platform for books where not only teacher, but also students can collaborate to create and maintain the books. I would love to see this in reality, I wanted to start it myself, but really don't have the time/resources to get to it.
- pavanred 13y ago
  I remember the practice of using photocopied textbooks during my undergrad. The place I am from, its quite common to use photocopies of textbooks because most books are very expensive. Besides, there were specific shops that used kerosene in the photocopiers (I don't know how it works though)and that reduced the cost of photocopying per page by almost a third or the original price. I remember distinctly that the photocopies you get by this method would carry a kerosene stink and sometimes the ink would fade over time.

lebek 13y ago

I spent the last 4 years at university and digital textbooks are almost never prescribed because students like hard copies. Your argument that educational establishments don't stand to benefit much financially from traditional textbooks is probably true, but not really the issue.

pserwylo 13y ago
You are absolutely correct. I guess the answer would be that if such books were, e.g. CC licensed, then hard copies would be able to be printed. Given the prevailence of self publishing firms available, one would hope there is a market for text book publishers who compete on the printing price alone. Such companies needn't even be publishers themselves, but rather a middleman which makes use of self publishing services.

singold 13y ago

THIS In my country there is currently a debate because we used to have a relatively big "industry" of photocopied textbooks because of the high prices of books. Some weeks or months ago, the police closed a lot of this places that photocopied books (mostly in front of the law school oh the irony), and now, nobody wants to photocopy books. I got really angry (not because I photocopied books, I have most of my book in pdf) but because the state university (the biggest and for some the best) likes to talk about how "anyone" can study for free (as in beer ;) but nobody talks about the huge bill of books you have if you buy them legally. I thought about some kind of wiki-like platform for books where not only teacher, but also students can collaborate to create and maintain the books. I would love to see this in reality, I wanted to start it myself, but really don't have the time/resources to get to it.

pavanred 13y ago
I remember the practice of using photocopied textbooks during my undergrad. The place I am from, its quite common to use photocopies of textbooks because most books are very expensive. Besides, there were specific shops that used kerosene in the photocopiers (I don't know how it works though)and that reduced the cost of photocopying per page by almost a third or the original price. I remember distinctly that the photocopies you get by this method would carry a kerosene stink and sometimes the ink would fade over time.