Questions About A Math Open Text - Canadaoer

17 Jun 2020

I have an instructor looking to adapt an existing open textbook that is under a CC-BY-NC
license, but we can only find it as a PDF. I'm wondering if anyone happens to have or
know of a more open version, particularly Pressbooks if possible. See below for details
about the book and his question about copyright.

Thank you.

Hi Heather —

I wanted to start a conversation with you about adapting an open textbook for MATH163. I
expect you’ll be able to highlight some things to consider as I undertake this project.

This is the resource I am planning on adapting:
https://openscholarship.wustl.edu/books/10/ . The textbook is released under CC4.0(BY+NC),
which, from my understanding gives me licence to transform and build upon the material and
then release it under a similar licence. My plan is to use this text as a base to create a
custom text for the course. This will mostly consist of pruning the some of the material
that my students aren’t prepared for, adding some material, and making minor notational
changes throughout.

One immediate question/concern that I have is copyright of the .pdf output versus
copyright of the .tex source file. The authors are resistant to release their source files
to me. (I recognize that they are not obligated to). If I cannot get access to these my
plan is to apply for funds from GMC to have a student, essentially, recreate the source
files. I worry about possible copyright issues here.

Heather M. Ross, BA BEd MEd

Educational Development Specialist

University of Saskatchewan

Gwenna Moss Centre for Teaching and Learning

Ph: 306-966-5327<tel:306-966-5327>

Find open textbooks and other open educational resources on:

http://open.usask.ca<http://open.usask.ca/>