Research Guides: Open Educational Resources (OER): Textbooks &amp; Monographs

Where to Find OER

Open Educational Resources are available from a broad range of educational institutions and other organizations across the country and internationally.

SUNY Geneseo's Milne Library has developed the Openly Available Sources Integrated Search (OASIS) tool to make finding things easier, and it searches more than 100 sources for OER content.

There's a lot out there! Here's a good way to think about OER as you find them:

Faculty Guide for Evaluating Open Education Resources (BCOER)
A guide to evaluating OER for course use by BCOER (open.bccampus.ca).
CC BY 4.0

Where to Find: Textbooks

These collections include textbooks in a range of disciplines, all available to read online and download for free under Creative Commons licenses.

Multidisciplinary Collections

GALILEO Open Learning Materials (University System of GA)
Textbooks and course materials from the University System of Georgia.
-- Disciplines include: Arts and Humanities; Biological Sciences; Business; Chemistry; Communication; Computer Science and Info Technology; Education; Engineering; Geological Sciences and Geography; Mathematics; Physics and Astronomy; and Social Sciences.
Multimedia Educational Resource for Learning and Online Teaching (MERLOT; CA State University System)
Textbooks plus other course materials. Every discipline community has an editorial board that manages the material in its field.
-- Disciplines include: Academic Support; Arts; Business; Education; Humanities; Mathematics and Statistics; Science and Technology; Social Sciences; and Workforce Development.
OER Commons (Institute for the Study of Knowledge Management in Education)
Textbooks plus other course materials. Faculty can use and adapt existing material, and contribute their own material for use by others.
-- Disciplines include: Applied Science; Arts & Humanities; Career and Technical Education; History; Life Science; Mathematics; Physical Science; and Social Science.
OpenStax (Rice University)
Peer-reviewed, openly accessible and adaptable textbooks. Students may access the books online or buy hard copies from Amazon, while faculty members can log in to adopt the textbooks as they choose. Faculty may also recommend books to students without formally adopting them for use.
-- Disciplines include: Math, Science, Social Sciences, and the Humanities.
Open SUNY Textbooks
Open textbooks written by SUNY faculty members. Available to download for free or read online.
-- Disciplines include Arts & Humanities; Education; Mathematics; Science and Technology.
Open Textbook Library (UMN)
Peer-reviewed textbooks available to download for free or purchase a print version. "All textbooks are either used at multiple higher education institutions; or affiliated with an institution, scholarly society, or professional organization."
-- Disciplines include: Accounting & Finance; Business, Management & Marketing; Computer Science & Information Systems; Economics; Education; Engineering; Humanities & Languages; Journalism, Media Studies & Communications; Law; Mathematics & Statistics; Medicine; Natural & Physical Sciences; Social Sciences; and Student Success.
Teaching Commons (Bepress)
Textbooks and other course material from institutions with repositories from Bepress/Digital Commons.
-- Disciplines include: Arts & Humanities; Business; Education; Engineering; Law; Life Sciences; Medicine & Health Sciences; Physical Sciences & Mathematics; and Social & Behavioral Sciences.
The Global Text Project (U of GA, U of Denver)
The Global Text Project brings together a collection of open textbooks for use by students in the developing world (or anywhere).
-- Disciplines include Business; Computing; Education; Health; Science; and Social Science.
200 Free Textbooks: A Meta Collection (Open Culture)
An ongoing list of links to open textbooks, collected by Open Culture. While some are intended for high school students, many if not most are for college-level classes.
-- Disciplines include Art History; Biology; Business and Management; Chemistry; Classics; Computer Science and Information Systems; Earth Science; Economics & Finance; Education; Electrical Engineering; Engineering; History; Languages; Law; Linguistics; Mathematics; Music; Philosophy; Physics; Political Science; Psychology; Sociology; and System Theory.

Arts & Humanities

Noba Collection: Psychology Textbooks and Course Materials
Textbooks and course modules (presentations, tests, instructor manuals) for a range of courses in psychology.
Open Music Theory (Kris Shaffer, Bryn Hughes, and Brian Moseley, originally published 2014)
"OMT strives to be a critical textbook: 'multi-authored, physically hackable, and legally alterable.' We hope this textbook can 'facilitate student access to existing knowledge, and empower them to critique it, dismantle it, and create new knowledge.'”

STEM

American Institute of Mathematics Open Textbook Initiative
"The American Institute of Mathematics (AIM) seeks to encourage the adoption of open source and open access mathematics textbooks. The AIM Editorial Board has developed evaluation criteria to identify the books that are suitable for use in traditional university courses. The Editorial Board maintains a list of Approved Textbooks which have been judged to meet these criteria." At least one approved book per subdiscipline, including Differential Equations, Combinatorics, Number Theory, and Complex Analysis.
Abstract Algebra: Theory and Applications (Thomas W. Judson, Stephen F. Austin State University, 2018)
"This text is intended for a one or two-semester undergraduate course in abstract algebra." Also includes "Sage Exercises for Abstract Algebra" by Robert A. Beezer (University of Puget Sound).
Last revised 2018.
Introduction to Hydrology (Steven A. Margulis, UCLA, 2017)
"The textbook provides a broad foundation in the topics of hydrologic science including: mass balance, basic atmospheric thermodynamics, radiation, atmospheric circulation, precipitation, snow, evapotranspiration, unsaturated flow and infiltration, groundwater, and runoff."
Fourth edition (2017).
Introduction to Probability, Statistics, and Random Processes (Hossein Pishro-Nik, UMass Amherst, 2014)
"[I]ntended for undergraduate as well as first-year graduate level courses on the subject. This probability textbook can be used by both students and practitioners in engineering, mathematics, finance, and other related fields."
Variational Principles in Classical Mechanics (Douglas Cline, U of Rochester, 2019)
"This book introduces variational principles, and illustrates the intellectual beauty, the remarkable power, and the broad scope, of applying variational principles to classical mechanics. A brief review of Newtonian mechanics compares and contrasts the relative merits of the intuitive Newtonian vectorial formulation, with the more powerful analytical variational formulations. Applications presented cover a wide variety of topics, as well as extensions to accommodate relativistic mechanics, and quantum theory."
Revised second edition, 2019.

Where to Find: Monographs

The open access publishing of academic monographs is spreading.

This is particularly true of many titles that would otherwise be out of print, but there is also a growing number of those initially published open. While these texts cannot be modified, they can definitely be assigned to students as part of course readings, and are available to read online and/or download for free.

Cornell UP Books on Project MUSE
20 books published by Cornell University Press, previously out of print, now available open access thanks to a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.
-- Disciplines include media studies, Russian history and social criticism, German history, literary criticism, and ethnography.
Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB)
A service of OAPEN (OA Publishing in European Networks), DOAB is a discovery tool that finds books published elsewhere (as opposed to the OAPEN Library, which are books published with OAPEN). DOAB books are both free to read and free to share.
INTECH
International publisher of open access books in Science, Technology and Medicine. Books are available to read online for free or purchase a print version.
-- Disciplines include: Physical Sciences, Engineering and Technology; Life Sciences; Health Sciences; and Social Sciences and Humanities.
NCBI Bookshelf
Books on Life Science and Healthcare, published by the National Center for Biotechnology Information, which can be downloaded for free.
Open Access Publishing in European Networks (OAPEN) Library
A collection of books published OA in Europe, available worldwide. Includes books published by Oxford University Press, Cambridge University Press, and Palgrave Macmillan, among many others. Books available through the OAPEN Library are free to read but not always free to share.
Open Book Publishers
British publishers of open access books and textbooks in all subjects. Books are available to download for free or to purchase print on demand.
UC Press E-Books Collection, 1982-2004 (Public Titles)
Monographs published by the University of CA Press from 1982 to 2004 and made openly accessible by the California Digital Library. While many are only available to those in the UC system, 700+ are available to the public.
-- Disciplines include American Studies; Art and Architecture; Economics and Business; Ethnic Studies; Humanities; Physical Sciences; Religion; Social Sciences; and many many more.

Open Educational Resources (OER)