Roles in Publishing

Introduction

It often takes a lot of people with diverse expertise to produce a consistent, quality publication. Yes, it's true that in an era of speedy self-publishing, certainly not all of the roles listed below are required. However, involving people in key roles will result in a consistent publication. In the longer term, it will also mean a consistent imprint, especially if you're working with a core team that understands your library's brand and style guide. 

Publishing Support

Below are five examples of commonly offered open textbook publishing support. Figuring out what kind of support you can offer is best informed by the people who are available to work in a publishing capacity. (See the capacity scan Links to an external site.). The examples below provide a sample snapshot of the many services and models that exist in the landscape. 

  1. Institutional repository (IR): Library provides a stable location to store open textbook files so that the public can access them.
  2. Open consultations: Librarians offer Creative Commons licensing consultations to open textbook creators. This may include related topics, like where to find openly licensed images and how to provide proper attribution.  
  3. Publishing tools: Library offers tools for creating open textbooks, often Pressbooks. The library may also offer training and tech support. For two examples, see UC Berkeley Links to an external site. and University of Arizona Links to an external site..  
  4. Grant program: Library funds faculty in either adapting an existing open textbook or writing a new one. Depending on the program, there may be additional support services offered. For example: open consultations, publishing tools, and services, like copyediting. (See CSU Ohio profile below.)
  5. Consortial program: Consortium manages a grant program across multiple institutions.

Publishing Roles

You may have in-house expertise in the areas listed below. If not, you may need to identify outside services. In some cases, one team member may support multiple publishing tasks.

  • Copyeditor: Ensures the textbook makes sense and has a consistent structure and voice.
  • Developmental Editor: Provides consultation on content structure and flow at the early stages.
  • Graphic Designer: Designs cover and potentially other content, including illustrations and infographics.
  • Instructional Designer: Identifies consistent design elements and textbook components to increase student engagement and support student learning.
  • Librarian: Ensures copyright, open license, public domain and other compliance.
  • Marketer: Provides marketing plan and support to promote the book.
  • Printer: Provides print copies.
  • Project Manager: Ensures the success of the project by managing people, timelines and processes to get the book to print.
  • Proofreader: Reviews the textbook for grammatical, spelling and typographical errors and makes corrections.
  • Typesetter: Creates consistent appearance of the textbook’s text, layout and spacing

Adapted from Defining Your Role Links to an external site. in Authoring Open Textbooks by Open Education Network (CC BY 4.0 Links to an external site.)

Publishing Profile

Cleveland State University Open Textbook Grant Program

by Heather Caprette

We launched our open textbook publishing effort at Cleveland State University, a 4-year public university, in 2017. It was funded by the Provost’s Office and managed by the library. For the first several years, we offered $500 or $1,000 grants for projects that started in both fall and spring. We offered $500 to faculty adopting an existing open textbook and adapting their course to fit the new textbook. We offered $1,000 to faculty who wanted to author a new open textbook or significantly revise an existing open textbook. 

An Evolving Grant Program

In 2022, we increased the amount for writing a new open textbook (75% or more original content) to $2,500. Faculty revising or remixing existing openly licensed/free content were awarded $1,000, as were faculty creating openly licensed ancillary materials (test question bank, slides, class activities). We offered five grants in 2022.

Faculty are supported by staff from multiple organizations on campus including the Michael Schwartz Library, Center for eLearning, Center for Instructional Technology & Distance Learning, and the Center for Faculty Excellence. One OER librarian manages the grant projects and organizes meetings. All librarians help in locating openly licensed and/or freely available course materials for grant recipients, as well as any other faculty on campus.

Pressbooks Support

The library self-hosts the Pressbooks authoring platform. Two administrators support faculty in creating new Pressbooks projects. They train faculty in how to use Pressbooks, and copy (or “clone”) existing Pressbooks projects that faculty want to remix and revise. 

The library also provides Pressbooks access to faculty who don’t receive grants, but have an initiative they want to pursue, such as revising an existing open textbook or creating open pedagogy projects.

When a Pressbooks project is completed, an administrator will make it public and add it to the Pressbook catalog, creating accurate metadata for the “Book Info” feature. Published open textbooks are also given an ISBN and listed on the imprint site, MSL Academic Endeavors Links to an external site..

Guiding Questions

  1. Which of these roles do you consider priorities for your project or imprint?
  2. Do you have in-house expertise in these roles? If not, can you identify and recruit people in these roles?
  3. If you need to hire people in these roles, have you set aside the necessary budget for their services?
  4. How will you define the scope of each role so that expectations are clear, reasonable, and able to be completed within the job duties?