BCcampus Open Education offers a growing collection of resources designed for educators across the province. If you have identified an open textbook in your subject area, course level, or program, or for your faculty needs, that is not currently in our collection, we’d like to hear about it.
Our selection process
To ensure the open textbooks meet our expectations for quality, relevancy, and ability to meet the needs of post-secondary faculty, students, and institutions, particularly within B.C. and Canada, each textbook submission is assessed to confirm the open textbook meets the minimum requirements.
Textbooks produced by an academic press OR an established publishing house that meet the minimum requirements will be accepted without further review from a subject matter expert. All other textbooks will be evaluated by a subject matter expert (SME) using the SME Evaluation Rubric [Word file]. If the SME recommends the textbook, it will be posted in the B.C. Open Textbook Collection.
We will notify applicants with a final decision within 4-8 weeks.
Assessing an open textbook
To help us continue to deliver quality open textbooks, please use the following to determine if your recommendation is appropriate for the collection:
Criteria
Required
- The open textbook must be released with an open-copyright licence (Creative Commons) or entered into the public domain. CC licences that contain the ND (non-derivative) provision are accepted on a case-by-case basis.
- All content (text, images, other media) used in the textbook is covered by an open-copyright licence (Creative Commons) or in the public domain
- Textbook is in a format that can be used to set up a print-on-demand option
- Textbook has been copy edited
- Textbook must include at least one editable file. Prefered editable files:
- Pressbooks XML, Open Document Text (.odt), or Word (.doc or .docx)
- Other editable files: HTML, LaTeX, ePUB
- Textbook must be organized into chapters and include:
- table of contents
- chapter learning outcomes
- learning activities
Highly recommended
- Textbook is online
- Textbook is available in at least two different file types
- Content is Canadian based
- Textbook has a unique cover
- Textbook meets the BCcampus accessibility criteria
Optional but preferred
- Textbook includes two or more editable files
- Textbook includes interactive objects or videos, and editable files are available for all objects
- Textbook includes ancillary resources such as test banks, videos, or presentation slides (PowerPoint, Pages, Slides, etc.)