Open Educational Resource Collective Administration Guide for Library Staff

Information about the Collective grants program can be found on the OER Collective website. 

• Please ensure all Project Team members listed on the attached MOU review, sign and return this document to oercollective@caul.edu.au as soon as possible.
• The document will then be countersigned by the Executive Director, CAUL and a copy returned to you for your records.
• Distribution of funds will not commence until this process is complete.

 

⇒ Distribution of Funds

• Once the above process is complete, CAUL will email the Institutional Key Contact (listed on the MoU) and request an invoice.
• The Institutional Key Contact will engage with internal finance operations of the institution to generate an invoice and send to oercollective@caul.edu.au.
• CAUL arranges payment of invoice to institution.
• Funds dispersed according to internal institution procedure and Project team’s agreement.

 

⇒ Register and Attend Community of Practice (CoP) sessions 

• Academic Authors, register here: https://www.caul.edu.au/events/oer-collective-academic-authors-cop-20233
• Library Staff, register here: https://www.caul.edu.au/events/oer-collective-library-staff-cop-20233
  • o Choose to attend all session dates when registering.
• Watch previous recordings - Find all Academic Author, Library Staff and combined recordings along with a summary of the session here: https://caul.libguides.com/oer-collective-administration/communities
• Watch the Induction session recording from 29 May 2023 (see further down the page).

 

⇒ Request Pressbooks shell

• The Institutional Key Contact listed in the MOU is to request a pressbooks shell for the open textbook project once authors are ready to start working in Pressbooks.

 

⇒ Get organised

1. Discuss, decide and document expectations between author/s in a separate author-to-author MOU. Your institution might already have a template, or you can access the templates available on the Publishing Workflow. 
2. Seek out your institution/s Intellectual Property policy. If multiple authors and/or institutions are involved in your project, confirm compatibility of local IP policies with Copyright Officers. Your library staff can help.
3. Understand the licence that will be applied to your work (CC BY-NC), including the benefits and limitations.
4. Learn about remixing CC-licensed materials. It's important that you ensure openly licensed content (if using) is compatible with the licence that will be applied to your textbook.
5. Create an OER Content Tracker to record copyright, permissions and attribution detail for third-party content.
6. Familiarise yourself with the Plan, Draft and Design stages of OER Collective Publishing Workflow.

 

⇒ Write the Content

• The most integral and time-consuming portion of the project! Refer to the CAUL OER Collective Publishing Workflow for guidance and meet with your library support team early and often.
• Remember, your first six chapters must be published by 31 December 2023.

 

► Reminder - Milestone Requirements

All project teams are required to publish six chapters of their book by 31 December 2023 (unless otherwise discussed).

'Published' means:

• The book is publicly visible on the Collective website, accessible via a URL. It will not be added to the OERC catalogue or Pressbooks Directory unless requested by the project team.
• The chapters should have had a publication quality review (incorporating a review of copyright; licence compatibility; structure and layout; links, embedded media and content; and accessibility) but do not need to be peer reviewed at this stage. Peer review can be done once the full book is completed. 
• Required book metadata applied - see Publish in Pressbooks.
• Further quality review and changes can be made to the content after the chapters are published.

If the team cannot meet the deadline, a revised plan and timeline must be communicated to the Director, Strategy & Analytics, CAUL by 30 September, 2023 at oercollective@caul.edu.au.

 

► Reminder - Submitting the Request to Publish Form

The Request to Publish form must be submitted by the Institutional Contact (library staff member) by the book's due date (31 December 2023 or otherwise discussed). In the three weeks post-submission, CAUL will review the book and its settings and make it public on Pressbooks.

Access materials from the grant program induction meeting.

All project teams are/were required to publish four chapters of their book by 28 February 2023. 'Published' means:

• The book is publicly visible on the Collective website, accessible via a URL. It will not be added to the OERC catalogue or Pressbooks Directory unless requested by the project team.
• The chapters should have had a publication quality review (incorporating a review of copyright; licence compatibility; structure and layout; links, embedded media and content; and accessibility) but do not need to be peer reviewed at this stage. Peer review can be done once the full book is completed. 
• Further quality review and changes can be made to the content after the chapters are published.

If the team has not/cannot meet the deadline, the Institutional Contact (library staff member) must email the Director, Strategy & Analytics, CAUL at oercollective@caul.edu.au as soon as possible. 

The Request to Publish form must be submitted by the Institutional Contact (library staff member) book's due date (either 28 February or the extended deadline). In the three weeks post-submission, CAUL will review the book and its settings and make it public on Pressbooks.

Many authors are not ready to publish their entire book and will instead only meet the requirement to publish four chapters by the due date. We recommend authors take the following actions to signal to readers that the book will be released in stages:

1. Add a prominent note (for example, using a textbox) on the first content page of the book to indicate that the book is being released in stages. They should also indicate that the book has not yet been peer reviewed.
2. Add a versioning page (here's a great example) to the book where you indicate when different versions of the book were released.

Don't forget, the book will only be accessible via the URL, not in the catalogue (unless the authors ask to have the book in the catalogue).