Once your OER is created and the correct license is applied, you can think about publishing your work to share with the world. Accessibility, diversity, and inclusion are important considerations when creating any OER content, including open textbooks. And the publishing platform you use is key, as it will inform the format of your content.

Watch this short video that reminds us of the value of sharing our OER content.

Questions to Consider

As you prepare to share your OER as published work, take some time to reflect on your answers to the following questions. Your answers may bring up more questions, or require you to rethink your approach to creating, licensing, and publishing OER.

Are there particular formats (PDF, EPUB, for example) you’d like to produce, considering both student needs and institutional needs?

Does your textbook require a significant number of tables, graphs, images, formulas, or unique typesetting challenges?

Is any of the existing content copyrighted by other people?

Do you want to include peer review in the authoring process?

How and where will you make your OER available?

Do you want your OER to be indexed in any institutional, statewide or disciplinary repositories?

Do you want to provide an accompanying rubric or other tool to solicit feedback from others?

We also recommend that you download and explore this Effective Practice Self-Evaluation tool before you share your work:

Download the Publishing and Sharing OER
Effective Practice Self-Evaluation Tool

Reviewing Campus Policies

If you have not done so already, check to see if your campus has any policies regarding OER. In many cases, campus policies exist to guide the development and review of OER materials prior to sharing them on a worldwide scale, clarify publication rights and licensing issues, outline the use of required infrastructure and other support services, identify human and other resources to support faculty in developing OER for teaching and learning, and define collaborations within and without the university and the intent to allow access.

Campus policies may even include incentives for OER development, such as stipends and/or course release time.

Exploring Print Options

While a majority of OER practice is centered around online and digital access, there is still a place for print in open. Print offers reliable offline access to course materials and allows forms of interaction in ways that electronic reading may not for some learners. Furthermore, recent studies have shown that students still prefer the print textbook experience over digital (iJET College Students’ Usage of and Preferences for Print and Electronic Textbooks; The Canadian Journal for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, As Good or Better than Commercial Textbooks: Students’ Perceptions and Outcomes from Using Open Digital and Open Print Textbooks).

SUNY OER Services supports print publishing through The SUNY Press. If you or a SUNY colleague is interested in offering students aprint copy of your OER course material, contact SUNY OER Services to find out more.

Write on this Course: The Benefits of Sharing

From cost savings and accessibility for all, to ease of use and repurposing, there are many benefits to openly sharing new OER.

What do you see as the greatest benefits of sharing original content openly?

You can use Hypothesis to add your answers as public annotations to this page. Comments are welcome anywhere on the page. Please use the tag #SUNYOERChat in your posts.

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