Open Access on the Rise: Textbooks, Journals, Etc.
- Dr. Roy Schestowitz
- 2014-04-13 09:31:53 UTC
- Modified: 2014-04-13 09:31:53 UTC
Sharing textbooks
These open-source textbooks have different features that electronic versions sold by traditional publishers
Why not jump aboard the open source bandwagon since the world does seem to be moving in that general direction as well in tech matters? That is what the University of Maryland is currently considering, to make use of open source textbooks since textbooks happen to be the single fastest growing expense for college students, apart from the constant twin thorns of rent and cost of living. Many other universities too, are looking for a solution when it comes to textbooks, and the University of Maryland would not be the first to implement such an idea since both the University of California and the University of Washington have already kicked off programs to offer their students a catalog of free and freely available open source textbooks.
Eben Upton is best known as the man behind the Raspberry Pi, a tiny, $25 computer designed to help turn kids into programmers. Upton priced it at $25 because he thought that's around what an average textbook cost: "I now understand that's an incorrect estimate. If we had a better idea of what school textbooks cost we would have had an easier job with the engineering over the years," he joked to Wired years later.
Fed up with academic textbooks making constant but minor updates, adding unnecessary chapters and providing unwanted worksheets, Scott Roberts was desperate for a new way to teach his PSYC 100: Introduction to Psychology class.
In the fall of 2010, he found a solution that not only relieved his frustrations but also saved his students money.
Holding a whiteboard, the University of Maryland-College Park students scrawled their complaints and posed for a picture.
“My name is Justin and I spent $114 on ONE textbook,” a student wrote. “My name is Jeff and I spent $736 on textbooks,” wrote another.
Academia
Last month marked the one-year anniversary of the formation of the Readium Foundation (Readium.org), an independent nonprofit launched in March 2013 with the objective of developing commercial-grade open source publishing technology software. The overall goal of Readium.org is to accelerate adoption of ePub 3, HTML5, and the Open Web Platform by the digital publishing industry to help realize the full potential of open-standards-based interoperability. More specifically, the aim is to raise the bar for ePub 3 support across the industry so that ePub maintains its position as the standard distribution format for e-books and expands its reach to include other types of digital publications.
We've been talking a lot about the power and importance of open access for academic (and especially government funded) research. More and more universities have agreed, with some even having general open access policies for their academics, requiring them to release research under open access policies. This makes sense, because one of the key aspects of education and knowledge is the ability to share it freely and to build on the work of others. Without open access, this is made much more difficult. So it's immensely troubling to discover that one of the biggest science publishers out there, Nature Publishing Group, has started telling academics that they need to get a "waiver" from their university's open access policies. The issue was raised by Duke's Scholarly Communications Officer, Kevin Smith, though it's likely happening at other universities as well:
In the latest skirmish between academia and publishers over the costs of academic journals, the University of Konstanz in Germany has broken off negotiations over a new licensing agreement with the scientific publisher Elsevier. The publisher’s prices are too high, said university Rector Ulrich Rüdiger in a statement, and the institution “will no longer keep up with this aggressive pricing policy and will not support such an approach.”
Recent Techrights' Posts
- Tesla's Debt More Than Doubled in 2 Years and the Company Will Operate in the Red (at a Loss) Quite Soon
- If your first-quarter net income is $409 million and you borrow billions from banks, plus interest to pay on those loans, then you're not far from returning to losses
- Microsoft and Windows Have Many Back Doors, But LLM Slop Keep Claiming That Linux Has "Backdoor"
- It's another example of LLM slop as FUD amplifier, via slopfarms as well
-
- Links 05/08/2025: Samsung and Microsoft Layoffs
- Links for the day
- Rumours of Mass Layoffs at Red Hat Next Week (August 11th, 2025)
- The eleventh means next Monday
- IBM is Shutting Down (Piecewise)
- IBM is basically being liquidated
- The Debian Language Police Department (PD)
- "there has never been complaints about anyone that was offended by this -off package"
- When The Register MS Says "Linux Backdoor" It Actually Talks About Malware
- The leading story in The Register US/MS this morning is Microsoft
- Microsoft Windows Fell to 19% "Market Share" in Montenegro
- Microsoft must be well aware of this trend
- Why We Also Include Gopher Links in Our Gemini (Protocol) Links
- There are still many people who use Gopher to relay their messages (like blog posts). They're mostly technical people.
- Shouting is an Indication of a Lack of Convincing Argument
- Beware what they are attempting to distract from
- Mongolia: Microsoft Windows at All-Time Low
- in 2009 when Windows was at 99.45% in Mongolia the company was "worth" less than 200 billion dollars
- About a Quarter of Today's "linux" News in Google News Came From One Domain and It's a Slopfarm
- Not kidding!
- Gemini Links 05/08/2025: Zombie Threat and Switching to NixOS
- Links for the day
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Monday, August 04, 2025
- IRC logs for Monday, August 04, 2025
- ChatGPT in Trouble
- Watch out for the newer buzzwords
- The Register MS Links to the Wrong statCounter Page
- They link to older data
- Dr. Andy Farnell Explains How Google Turned From "Librarian" Into "Oracle", Telling Us What to Think Instead of Where to Look
- Google was always a lousy librarian
- Microsoft Layoffs Continue in August 2025
- If Microsoft is doing so well, how come about 10 rounds of layoffs in about 7 months in 2025?
- In Many Countries Vista 11 Adoption Stalled or Became Negative
- Not just because people move to GNU/Linux
- Microsofters' Lawyers Are Name-calling and Insulting Microsoft Critics, Even Their Spouses
- How not to win arguments
- Flagging or Tagging Slop That We Find Online
- Right now we use ImageMagick
- Links 04/08/2025: Very Bad Weather and Travel Restrictions in China
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 04/08/2025: Misiamisia and Mobile Linux
- Links for the day
- Microsoft's Stock is Like a Religion, Microsoft Goes Into 'Hiding' (From Shareholders)
- like a religious person or devout believer, the media just parrot anything Microsoft says
- Links 04/08/2025: 80 Years Since Last Nuclear War, IPv6 in China
- Links for the day
- Groklaw Static Site Relaunches With New Theme, But Many Pages and All the Comments Are Missing
- We suppose that's still a lot better than the site being offline, as it was for several months
- "For Five decades; For freedoms; For all users" (Original EMACS Turns 50 Next Year)
- Linus Benedict Torvalds was only 6 when EMACS started
- In Spain, Microsoft's Search Engine Market Share Fell to 2%
- 16 years have passed since Bing was introduced
- Protecting GNU/Linux-Centric Journalism From Serial Sloppers
- Unoriginal slop is taking away traffic from the people who did all the real work
- It Looks Like Managers at Oracle Now Use LLM Slop to Write Blog Posts
- Did he cheat by prompting LLMs for mindless text "filler"?
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Sunday, August 03, 2025
- IRC logs for Sunday, August 03, 2025
- Gemini Links 04/08/2025: Qubes OS and Curious crypto case of certificates (CCCC)
- Links for the day
- They Tell Us That "Cloud Storage" is Safe and Robust to Incidents Like Fires
- Do you have backups? Where are they and who controls them?
- "Allowing SDL to default to Wayland caused a number of customer issues so keep the default at X11 for now"
- 2025 is another year of Wayland ambitions. It's also a year of self-fulfilling prophecies.
- In The United Kingdom (UK), Microsoft Search (Bing) Falls to All-Time Low
- Grow? What grow??? It's collapsing.
- GNU/Linux Reaches 5% in Oman
- Some GNU/Linux distros are made in Oman
- Google's "AI Mode" is a Pathetic Joke Prematurely Introduced in the UK (Like "Bard", Which Sank the Company's Shares)
- what Google "thinks" about PCLinuxOS
- What the Free Software Foundation Started Four Decades Ago is Becoming Mainstream
- "Four decades; Four freedoms; For all users"
- Doing a Better Job at Labelling Slop Images
- we'll label screenshots that contain slop, typically with red-coloured text overlay
- Social Control Media is Out of Style
- What's your excuse for wasting time on (or in) it?
- Maldives: GNU/Linux at All-Time High, Windows at New Lows
- data from statCounter shows a reassuring trend
- Efficiency is Good, So Why Won't Governments Cull LLM Companies Using Stronger, Stringent Policies?
- Like every bubble that ever existed, including some recent ones, an end will come
- The Defunct Site LinuxConfig Has Published a Fake Article About Richard Stallman Using LLM Slop, Which Stallman Calls "Bullshit Generator"
- Worse yet, it is writing using a "Bullshit Generator" (the term used by Stallman) about Stallman's health
- Microsoft Windows Falls to All-Time Lows in Morocco and Algeria
- About 70% or even less
- StopGenAI in the Cyber Show (C|S)
- covering a theme that we too covered a lot lately
- Gemini Links 03/08/2025: Once-a-Decade Couch Shopping and Blessings in Disguise
- Links for the day
- Links 03/08/2025: Political Catch-up, Global Warming, and Hunger
- Links for the day
- Brittany Day Entered LLM Slop Into LinuxSecurity.com and Something Hilarious Happened: The Site is "Exploited"
- The brainless, effortless copypasta of "slop artists" shows its limits
- Links 03/08/2025: Microsoft Exchange 0-day Exploited and Avoidable Nuclear Escalation
- Links for the day
- Next Month 'New Techrights' Turns Two
- Next month, on the fourth week, it'll be 2 years since the migration
- Definitely Not a Ponzi Scheme
- Bitcoin v Microsoft
- Online Safety Act Tries to Accomplish the Impossible
- All I can say is, "good luck with that!"
- The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is a Billionaires' Lobby
- Billionaires that control tech companies
- Microsoft Borrows 3 Billion Dollars Per Month, a Company Truly Worth Trillions Would Not Do This
- if Windows (and Office) "market share" fell from about 90% to barely 30%, how come Microsoft is now "valued" at 20 times more?
- It's Even Worse Than Microsoft Lunduke Puts It; GNOME is SLAPPing Journalists
- In our experience, GNOME is so malicious - some elements of it in particular - that it would launch multiple simultaneous SLAPP campaigns not only against journalists but also their spouses
- GNU/Linux Adoption Reaches All-Time Highs in Chile, statCounter Indicates
- This month marks 4 years since Vista 11 came out (as a fake "leak") and some surveys still measure its adoption at less than 40%
- Slop Will Not Change the World
- Some of us grow up sooner and leave that nonsense behind (or altogether avoid/skip it)
- Gemini Links 03/08/2025: Nostalgia and TOFU
- Links for the day
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Saturday, August 02, 2025
- IRC logs for Saturday, August 02, 2025