Open textbook project managers may be librarians, instructional designers, one of the authors, or another professional. You may manage one project or several. Your responsibilities may vary depending on the project, strengths of team members, and areas of expertise.

Throughout project management, your most important role may be that of communicator. Communicate as much as possible, in a variety of formats, with every stakeholder at every stage. Additional responsibilities, divided into three broad phases may include:

Phase 1: Launching Projects

Manage open textbook grant proposal process, including assembling a group to evaluate proposals
Meet with authors to kick off project and clarify expectations
Develop textbook structure and elements in collaboration with authors, instructional designers
Manage project timeline and author (and team, if applicable)
Ensure Creative Commons license (CC BY) author education and compliance
Ensure accessibility, through author education and compliance

Phase 2: Developing Projects

Provide open resource support
Coordinate freelancers
Coordinate peer review
Clean up manuscript
Add metadata
Provide funds and/or budget management and invoicing

Phase 3: Completing & Sharing Projects

Host completed open textbook file(s) in institutional repository
Market open textbook
Report on impact, including adoption rate and student savings
Develop a plan for textbook maintenance

Scribe Workflow

The following are common production and workflow responsibilities for project managers who are working with Scribe:

Compose Word files (or add structure later)
Manage Well Formed Document Workflow aspects of project (maintain structure, troubleshoot style/conversion errors, communicate with Scribe if necessary)
Review first draft of manuscript to ensure consistent structure
Manage one round of revisions with author
Use the Hub to create different file formats

The project manager is the central person to keep the project on time and on budget. Often, the project manager will work in the following order (note that certain projects may not follow this timeline, and that this is a simplified overview):

Receive manuscript
Vet the document for potential production issues
Communicate with author about issues discovered in vet
Create production schedule
Begin production

Rebus Projects

Rebus Projects is a platform you can use to guide open textbook projects through the publishing workflow. It also makes it easy to find, recruit, and organize collaborators. In other words, it is a tool for launching, developing and sharing open textbooks. In addition, it can be leveraged with any publishing platform. While it is easily integrated with Pressbooks, a book publishing platform, it can also be your project management tool of choice regardless of how you ultimately publish a project.

Guiding Questions

What project management experience can you leverage for the roles described?
What support do you need to develop project management capacity for local open textbook projects?
Are there partners or colleagues you can work with in some of the roles described?
Is there funding for outsourcing services? For example, working with freelancers.

Additional Resources

Adapted from Defining Your Role in Authoring Open Textbooks by Open Textbook Network (CC BY)