Each university library will have their own process for archiving open textbooks in their institutional repository depending on their repository system and internal requirements.
Below is a basic process for contributing open textbooks to an institutional repository:
- Create a new record.
- Select the appropriate item type (e.g. ‘Book’ or ‘Textbook’).
- Fill out the relevant metadata for your textbook (e.g. title, authors, etc.). The publisher will be:
- '[your university/university press]' if publishing through your institution
- the ‘Council of Australian University Librarians (CAUL) and [your university/university press]' if publishing through the OER Collective.
- Upload your exported book files to the record for archiving only. This may be:
- both the PDF and EPUB
- the PDF only.
While Creative Commons licences allow you to distribute copies of the textbook through your institutional repository, it’s recommended that you don’t make these files public, and instead use the DOI or URL field to link back to Pressbooks. This will:
- allow you to keep view and download statistics together in Pressbooks to make it easier to measure your textbook’s usage and impact
- ensure readers have access to the full range of Pressbooks viewing and download options for your textbook
- ensure readers are accessing the latest version of the textbook.
- Fill out the copyright information and select your textbook’s licence.
Since open textbooks aren’t reportable under the current Excellence for Research in Australia (ERA) guidelines you won’t need to include any reporting information for your textbook.
- Once you’ve finished adding all the information and attachments, preview the record to check that all details are correct.
- Publish or send the record to the public repository.
If you haven’t already, it’s a good idea to work with your library’s repository team to develop a written procedure for storing open textbooks in your institutional repository.
