OpenStax

Not to be confused with OpenStack.
OpenStax
Type of site
Open educational resources
Available inEnglish, Spanish, Polish
HeadquartersRice University
Houston, Texas, United States
OwnerRice University
RevenueNonprofit funded by foundation grants and commercial services[1]
URLopenstax.org
Launched2012 (2012)
Current statusActive
Content license
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International[2]

OpenStax (formerly OpenStax College) 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.[3]

Aiming to compete with major publishers' offerings,[4][5] the project was initially funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the Michelson 20 Million Minds Foundation, and the Maxfield Foundation.[4][6][7] All textbook content is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution Licenses; specifically, the books are available under the CC BY license (except for Calculus, which is available under CC BY-NC-SA), which means that instructors are able to use, adapt, and remix the content, as long as they attribute OpenStax.

In 2017, OpenStax announced that they were partnering with UK Open Textbooks to spread the use of their open content in the UK,[8] and partnering with Katalyst Education to form OpenStax Polska, bringing Polish-language versions of select OpenStax books to universities in Poland.

As of January 2024, OpenStax asserts that their products have saved $2.9 billion in education costs since 2012, and that 7 million students from 150 countries and 70 percent of higher education institutions in the US use OpenStax.[9]

  1. ^ "How a University Took on the Textbook Industry – EdSurge News". EdSurge. 2019-10-24. Archived from the original on 2019-10-26. Retrieved 2019-10-26.
  2. ^ "OpenStax". Archived from the original on 2019-10-03. Retrieved 2019-10-26.
  3. ^ "OpenStax Tutor Discontinuing, but support and resources remain available!". openstax.org. Archived from the original on 2022-10-06. Retrieved 2022-10-06.
  4. ^ a b Smith, Mitch. "Why Pay for Intro Textbooks?". Inside Higher Ed. Archived from the original on 16 June 2013. Retrieved 24 April 2013.
  5. ^ Coldewey, Devin (7 February 2012). "Rice University And OpenStax Announce First Open-Source Textbooks". TechCrunch. Archived from the original on 21 May 2013. Retrieved 24 April 2013.
  6. ^ Robe, Johnathan. "Free College Textbooks: Wave of the Future?". Forbes. Archived from the original on 8 August 2013. Retrieved 24 April 2013.
  7. ^ Guttenplan, D.D. (12 February 2012). "Big Savings for U.S. Students in Open-Source Book Program". New York Times. Archived from the original on 2 April 2015. Retrieved 24 April 2013.
  8. ^ "Rice University-based OpenStax partners with UK Open Textbooks". news.rice.edu. Archived from the original on 2018-09-20. Retrieved 2018-09-20.
  9. ^ "OpenStax". openstax.org. Archived from the original on 2024-02-04. Retrieved 2024-01-18.