 Logo as of August 2022 | |
| Developer(s) | Book Oven, Inc. |
|---|---|
| Initial release | 2011 |
| Stable release | 5.20.1 / 27 April 2021 |
| Repository | https://github.com/pressbooks |
| Written in | PHP |
| Platform | WordPress |
| Type | content management system |
| License | GNU GPLv3 |
| Website | https://pressbooks.org/ |
Pressbooks is an open source content management system designed for creating books. It is based on WordPress, and can export content in many formats for ebooks, webbooks or print. [1]
Pressbooks is developed by Book Oven, Inc., a Montréal-based company founded in 2011 by Hugh McGuire (who also founded the audio book platform LibriVox). [1] [2] [3] Originally aimed at self-publishing authors, in 2017 Pressbooks shifted its focus to work with universities on academic and textbook publishing. [3]
The software is built on WordPress Multisite with modification of the admin and reader interfaces to reflect the intention of authoring books, a choice of themes for formating books, and to allow the export of books in print-ready PDF, mobi, ePub, and many other open formats. [4] [5] It is available as a hosted service for self-publishers (pressbooks.com), supported institutional hosting (PressbooksEdu), third party hosts, or self-hosting of the software available from pressbooks.org.
Pressbooks is often used to create open textbooks and other forms of open educational resource, for example at the following institutions:
Academic publishing is the subfield of publishing which distributes academic research and scholarship. Most academic work is published in academic journal articles, books or thesis. The part of academic written output that is not formally published but merely printed up or posted on the Internet is often called "grey literature". Most scientific and scholarly journals, and many academic and scholarly books, though not all, are based on some form of peer review or editorial refereeing to qualify texts for publication. Peer review quality and selectivity standards vary greatly from journal to journal, publisher to publisher, and field to field.
Open educational resources (OER) are teaching, learning, and research materials intentionally created and licensed to be free for the end user to own, share, and in most cases, modify. The term "OER" describes publicly accessible materials and resources for any user to use, re-mix, improve, and redistribute under some licenses. These are designed to reduce accessibility barriers by implementing best practices in teaching and to be adapted for local unique contexts.
The University Press of Florida (UPF) is the scholarly publishing arm of the State University System of Florida, representing Florida's twelve state universities. It is located in Gainesville near the University of Florida, one of the state's major research institutions. It is overseen by the Florida Board of Governors and publishes works from and about the state. Its predecessor was the University of Florida Press.
diagrams.net is a cross-platform graph drawing software developed in HTML5 and JavaScript. Its interface can be used to create diagrams such as flowcharts, wireframes, UML diagrams, organizational charts, and network diagrams. Parts of its source code are provided under the Apache 2 open-source license.
RefWorks is a web-based commercial reference management software package. It is produced by Ex Libris, a ProQuest company. RefWorks LLC was founded in 2001 as a partnership between Earl B. Beutler and Cambridge Scientific Abstracts from 2002 until being acquired by ProQuest in 2008.
Zotero is free and open-source reference management software to manage bibliographic data and related research materials, such as PDF files. Features include web browser integration, online syncing, generation of in-text citations, footnotes, and bibliographies, an integrated PDF reader and note editor, as well as integration with the word processors Microsoft Word, LibreOffice Writer, and Google Docs. It was originally created at the Center for History and New Media at George Mason University and, as of 2021, is developed by the non-profit Corporation for Digital Scholarship.
The Public Knowledge Project (PKP) is a non-profit research initiative that is focused on the importance of making the results of publicly funded research freely available through open access policies, and on developing strategies for making this possible including software solutions. It is a partnership between the Faculty of Education at the University of British Columbia, the Canadian Centre for Studies in Publishing at Simon Fraser University, the University of Pittsburgh, Ontario Council of University Libraries, the California Digital Library and the School of Education at Stanford University. It seeks to improve the scholarly and public quality of academic research through the development of innovative online environments.
The following is a comparison of e-book formats used to create and publish e-books.
The Dataverse is an open source web application to share, preserve, cite, explore and analyze research data. Researchers, data authors, publishers, data distributors, and affiliated institutions all receive appropriate credit via a data citation with a persistent identifier.
An open textbook is a textbook licensed under an open license, and made available online to be freely used by students, teachers and members of the public. Many open textbooks are distributed in either print, e-book, or audio formats that may be downloaded or purchased at little or no cost.
The following is a comparison of major desktop publishing software.
Lyryx Learning (Lyryx) is an educational software company offering open educational resources (OERs) paired with online homework & exams for undergraduate introductory courses in Mathematics & Statistics and Business & Economics.
A library consortium is any cooperative association of libraries that coordinates resources and/or activities on behalf of its members, whether they are academic, public, school or special libraries, and/or information centers. Library consortia have been created to service specific regions or geographic areas, e.g., local, state, regional, national or international. Many libraries commonly belong to multiple consortia. The goal of a library consortium is to amplify the capabilities and effectiveness of its member libraries through collective action, including, but not limited to, print or electronic resource sharing, reducing costs through group purchases of resources, and hosting professional development opportunities. The “bedrock principle upon which consortia operate is that libraries can accomplish more together than alone.”
D-Scribe Digital Publishing is an open access electronic publishing program of the University Library System (ULS) of the University of Pittsburgh. It comprises over 100 thematic collections that together contain over 100,000 digital objects. This content, most of which is available through open access, includes both digitized versions of materials from the collections of the University of Pittsburgh and other local institutions as well as original 'born-electronic' content actively contributed by scholars worldwide. D-Scribe includes such items as photographs, maps, books, journal articles, dissertations, government documents, and technical reports, along with over 745 previously out-of-print titles published by the University of Pittsburgh Press. The digital publishing efforts of the University Library System began in 1998 and have won praise for their innovation from the leadership at the Association of Research Libraries and peer institutions.
OpenStax is a nonprofit educational technology initiative based at Rice University. Since 2012, OpenStax has created peer-reviewed, openly-licensed textbooks, which are available in free digital formats and for a low cost in print. Most books are also available in Kindle versions on Amazon.com and in the iBooks Store. OpenStax's first textbook was College Physics, which was published online, in print, and in iBooks in 2012. OpenStax launched OpenStax Tutor Beta in June 2017, adaptive courseware based on cognitive science principles, machine learning, and OpenStax content. However, it was announced in October 2022 that Tutor was being discontinued.
Open educational resources in Canada are the various initiatives related to open education, open educational resources (OER), open pedagogies (OEP), open educational practices (OEP), and open scholarship that are established nationally and provincially across Canadian K-12 and higher education sectors, and where Canadian based inititatives extend to international collaborations.
eCampusOntario is a provincially-funded non-profit organization that leads a consortium of Ontario’s publicly-funded colleges, universities and Indigenous institutes to develop and test online learning tools to advance the use of education technology and digital learning environments.
The Boston Library Consortium (BLC) is a library consortium based in the Boston area with 26 member institutions across New England.
The Ontario Council of University Libraries (OCUL) is an academic library consortium of Ontario's 21 university libraries located in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Formed in 1967, OCUL member institutions work together to maximize the expertise and resources of their institutions through shared services and projects. OCUL works together in a number of key areas of importance for library services, including collective content purchasing, shared digital infrastructure, external partnerships, and professional development initiatives.
The Accessible Books Consortium (ABC) is a public-private partnership which was launched in 2014 by the World Intellectual Property Organization. The ABC was created with the intent of being "one possible initiative, amongst others, to implement the aims of the Marrakesh VIP Treaty at a practical level." ABC's goal is "to increase the number of books worldwide in accessible formats - such as braille, audio, e-text, and large print and to make them available to people who are blind, have low vision or are otherwise print disabled."
