The university’s Open Textbook team says the Pressbooks platform allows staff to create “a compelling alternative to commercial texts”

“Compelling?” It will be for academics who want to create the texts they want to use, from scratch, or by adapting open access content.

And it will be for students who will like content custom created for their campus and courses, plus not getting slugged for-profit publisher prices.

And it will be for education publishers, although the compulsion might be of the rigid in fear variety.

But other than a commitment to teaching and a delight in students succeeding, what is in it for academics?

Quite a bit, a digital delivery expert tells CMM. “If you are good with social media you can get yourself pretty well known and get your publication used by quite a few people. So, it’s about reputational impact. The sandstones still have a preference for “publisher” based content, but outside that group, it is generally worthwhile.”