Each open text is different and has a different publishing journey and variation in pedagogical design. However, each open text is guided by a publishing workflow which has five steps:

1. Prepare and plan
2. Write and create
3. Review and edit
4. Publish and share
5. Evaluate and maintain.

1. Plan and Prepare

At this stage, you should ask yourself a few key questions to gauge your OER knowledge and skills before starting an open text. Have you explored OER content in your subject area? Do you need training on working with openly licensed content? Have you scoped and created an outline for your text? How will you manage and keep track of content?

Having an OER consultation with a member of the JCU Library Open Education team (OE team) at this stage is pivotal. Once you have a consultation and are happy to proceed with the text, you will sign a Memorandum of Understanding and begin the writing process.

2. Write and Create

This phase is where the most time is spent on your open text. We encourage you to send us single chapters once they are completed so we can check for any copyright issues and help design a sample chapter in Pressbooks for you. This stage includes heavy intellectual work and includes being mindful of copyright, accessibility, academic integrity, and diversity and inclusion.

At this stage, you will need to become familiar with JCU’s open publishing platform, Pressbooks.

3. Review and Edit

Quality assurance is an essential part of our publishing workflow and you are expected to have your text reviewed by a suitable reviewer with disciplinary knowledge of your text’s topic. Copyediting and proofreading are undertaken by the author/s in this phrase. The OE team will review copyright and accessibility.

4. Publish and Share

Once you are happy with your text, inform the OE team who will send a request to the Director, Library Services, for your book to be published.

Once the book is approved and published, consider how you will communicate and promote your text. The OE team can help you with this and will deposit your book in national and international repositories.

5. Evaluate and Maintain

You can measure the reach and impact of your open text through analytics, adoptions, reviews and student feedback. Additionally, as an author, you should consider maintaining your completed open text by updating content when necessary and correcting mistakes. These steps are required for the ongoing quality, relevance and sustainability of your book. We also have the option of creating editions of our open texts.

Chapter Attribution

This chapter has been adapted in parts from:

Open Publishing Guide for Authors by University of Southern Queensland. Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.