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On this page you will find several openly licensed textbooks along with supplemental material, interactive simulations, and other resources.

​​For more information about Creative Commons including license descriptions, please see the Creative Commons tab.​

Featured Resource

Medline Plus videos and cool tools home page screen shotMedline Plus Videos & Cool Tools - general health education, consumer health, and patient education resources. "Learn by watching health videos on topics such as human anatomy, surgical procedures, and health news. Test your knowledge with interactive tutorials and games. Check your health by using the calculators and quizzes." To re-use these materials, see the Copyright Information. Includes Interactive tutorials, Anatomy videos, Surgery videos, and more.​

Open Textbooks

Anatomy and Physiology by OpenStax College 

  • Anatomy and Physiology, OpenStax College, CC BY 3.0

Additional Sources of Open Textbooks

NLM Bookshelf home page screenshotNLM / NCBI Bookshelf (National Library of Medicine / National Center for Biotechnology Information) "provides free online access to books and documents in life science and healthcare." To use these materials, see the Copyright information.

Course materials: Lecture Videos, Interactive Simulations etc.

MIT open courseware logoHarvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology open courses include a variety of topics such as: Health Information Systems to Improve Quality of Care in Resource-Poor Settings, Biomedical Signal and Image Processing, Genomics and Computational Biology, and Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging: Data Acquisition and Analysis. These courses include many types of course materials such as: video/audio lectures, lecture notes, assessments, online textbooks, interactive simulations. To re-use these materials, see the Creative Commons CC BY NC SA 4.0 license and Terms of Use.

Images

  • Photoshare, "Thousands of International Health and Development Images, Free for nonprofit and educational use." - supported by Johns Hopkins University. Terms of Use

  • NIH Image Bank, "The NIH Image Bank contains images from the collections of the 27 Institutes and Centers that comprise the National Institutes of Health. Contents include general biomedical and science-related images, clinicians, computers, patient care-related images, microscopyimages, and various exterior images." ​Copyright and Re-use

  •  HEAL - Health Education Assets Library - "The Health Education Assets Library (HEAL) is a collection of over 22,000 freely available digital materials for health sciences education. The collection is now housed at the University of Utah J. Willard Marriott Digital Library." Copyright: Unrestricted use for educational purposes - check individual image 'rights' information for extent of re-use allowed for that image.
  • ​Public Health Image Library - Images from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Terms of use information is on their
  • FAQ page and states, "Images are either 'Public Domain' (free use) or 'Copyright Protected' (restricted, obtain permission before use)" - most are public domain, but check individual image information regarding public domain or copyright status.​

Featured Resources

National Science Digital Library  - Use the advanced search to locate science, technology, engineering and mathematics educational materials in a variety of formats and levels.

AMSER: Applied Math and Science Education Repository

PhET Interactive Simulations (Demo of Faraday's law. Click in the box labeled "field lines" to display field lines.)

Open Textbooks

Fundamentals of Electrical Engineering I, authored by Don Johnson, edited by Ross J. Reedstrom, CC BY 1.0.  The course focuses on the creation, manipulation, transmission, and reception of information by electronic means. Elementary signal theory; time- and frequency-domain analysis; Sampling Theorem. Digital information theory; digital transmission of analog signals; error-correcting codes.

​Adaptive Map for Engineering Statics authored by Jacob Moore The Adaptive Map is an open textbook for engineering statics containing written explanations, video lectures, worked examples, and homework problems. CC BY NC 3.0

Additional Sources of Open Textbooks

InTech Science, Technology and Medicine books (2,500+ books) [open access, but not openly licensed]

Course materials: Lecture Videos, Interactive Simulations etc.

MITOpenCourseWare logoMIT Open Courses in Engineering cover topics throughout MIT Engineering Departments: Aeronautics and Astronautics, Biological Engineering, Chemical Engineering, Civil and Environmental Engineering, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Engineering Systems Division, Health Sciences and Technology, Materials Science and Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Nuclear Science and Engineering. These courses include many types of course materials such as: video/audio lectures, lecture notes, assessments, online textbooks, interactive simulations. To re-use these materials, see the Creative Commons CC BY NC SA 4.0 license and Terms of Use.

Stanford engineering everywhere logoStanford Engineering Everywhere (SEE) programming includes one of Stanford’s most popular engineering sequences: the three-course Introduction to Computer Science taken by the majority of Stanford undergraduates, and seven more advanced courses in artificial intelligence and electrical engineering. Course materials include materials such as: lectures, syllabi, handouts, assignments, exams, software. To re-use these materials, see theCC BY 3.0 license.

Open Textbooks

Introductory Chemistry open textbook from BCcampus

 

 

 

       Title screen shot of Concept Development Studies in Chemistry       Virtual textbook of organic chemistry - title screenshot

 

Additional Sources of Open Textbooks

ChemEd DL logoChemEd DL includes "...digital resources, tools, and online services ... for teaching and learning chemistry." "The Chemical Education Digital Library Living Textbooks are online textbooks which cover a variety of topics including general and physical chemistry." See the Terms of Use.

Course materials: Lecture Videos, Interactive Simulations etc.

"XCITR is a repository for exploring and sharing chemical information teaching resources." To re-use these materials, follow the terms of use.

 

PhET logo

"PhET provides fun, free, interactive, research-based science and mathematics simulations. We extensively test and evaluate each simulation to ensure educational effectiveness."  To re-use these materials, follow the CC BY 3.0 permissions.

 

 

University of California - Irvine - Open Chemistry

Selected courses including required lecture courses for undergraduate UCI Chemistry majors and some electives and graduate courses. Video lectures are licensed CC BY SA 3.0.  

ChemWiki logo  ​The ChemWiki is a collaborative approach toward chemistry education where an Open Access textbook environment is constantly being written and re-written by students and faculty members resulting in a free Chemistry textbook to supplant conventional paper-based books. See also the ChemWiki Core. To re-use these materials, follow the CC BY NC SA 3.0 permissions.​

​Open Textbooks

Additional Sources of Open Textbooks

NLM Bookshelf home page screenshotNLM / NCBI Bookshelf (National Library of Medicine / National Center for Biotechnology Information) "provides free online access to books and documents in life science and healthcare." To use these materials, see the Copyright information.

Course materials: Lecture Videos, Interactive Simulations etc.

MIT Life Sciences Courses image"We present here a set of MIT courses that are Life Sciences-based. Pursuing an education in Life Sciences is both exciting and challenging, and we hope you experience both in viewing this collation!"  To re-use these materials, follow the CC BY NC SA permissions.

 

PhET logo

"PhET provides fun, free, interactive, research-based science and mathematics simulations. We extensively test and evaluate each simulation to ensure educational effectiveness."  To re-use these materials, follow the CC BY 3.0 permissions.

 

 

Science Forward logoScience Forward "videos have been produced by Science Forward to support inquiry-based basic science classes.  Students, we expect, will watch the videos and come to class with a wider range of basic questions, primed for discussion." To re-use these materials, follow the CC BY NC SA 4.0 permissions.

See also

Encyclopedia of LifeThe Encyclopedia of Life is an unprecedented effort to gather and share scientific knowledge about all living things in a single online resource, giving each of us a breathtaking view of our amazing world. To re-use these materials, follow the terms of use.

Featured Resource

  • A free, comprehensive, peer-reviewed, award-winning Open Text (website) for students and faculty in college-level courses that require writing and research. (CC BY-NC-ND)

Open Textbooks

Additional Sources of Open Textbooks

English (from BCCampus)

Writing & Humanities (from Univ of MN)

English Composition (from CollegeOpenTextbooks)

Course materials: Lecture Videos, Interactive Simulations etc.

MIT Open Courseware on literature (CC BY NC SA)

English Composition I CC BY (Saylor Foundation)

Writing Spaces (licenses vary)

Online Writing Lab (Purdue) - (c) All Rights Reserved

See also

TED Talks (CC BY NC-ND) on literature

Guide to Finding Interesting Works in the Public Domain Online

HathiTrust Digital Library (7 million volumes, 1 billion pages. 1200s-Present)

Project Gutenberg (45,000+ books in the public domain)

Early English Books Online (public domain) (digital facsimile page images of virtually every work printed in England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales and British North America and works in English printed elsewhere from 1473-1700)​

Featured Resource

Open Textbooks

  • Deutsch im Blick is the web-based first-year German program developed and in use at the University of Texas. It is an open access site with free and open multimedia resources, which requires neither password nor fees. Deutsch im Blick has a companion grammar reference site: Grimm Grammar http://coerll.utexas.edu/gg
  • A 13- chapter French textbook.

Activities

  • Supplementary materials for students in beginning Spanish that focus on issues of cultural identity of Spanish speakers in the United States. Includes glossed readings, extensive multimedia content and flash-based comprehension questions.
  • A media-rich curriculum for intermediate Spanish that answers the MLA's call for the development of "transcultural and translingual competence" and serves as a platform for collaboration among instructors learning about technology. Winner of the 2012 Focus Award from the Computer Assisted Language Instruction Consortium (CALICO).
  • Activities for French learners at the beginning and intermediate levels that are intended to be used in conjunction with any curriculum. The interactive nature of many of the activities also make the site suitable for independent study or practice.
  • A complete web-based curriculum for introductory Russian. Winner of the 2016 Access to Language Education award from the Computer Assisted Language Instruction Consortium and the 2017 Best Contribution to Language Pedagogy award from the American Association of Teachers of Slavic and East European Languages. Introduced in Fall of 2015, the curriculum has been adopted by twenty universities (http://www.mezhdunami.org/instructors/adoptees.shtml) for Fall 2017.

Course materials: Lecture Videos, Interactive Simulations etc.

  • A growing collection of language learning materials covering: Portuguese, German, French, Mandarin Chinese, Spanish, Arabic, Hindi, Italian, Russian, Yoruba, Biblical Hebrew, Japanese, Persian, Malayalam, and more.
  • Free to use, openly licensed resources from K-12 to college. Featuring islamic studies, art, poetry, music, literature, history, and Arabic language. 
    (Arabic Interface) https://arabic.oercommons.org/AR

See also

Open Textbooks

OpenStax Calculus  (Vol1) (Vol2) (Vol3)

APEX Calculus / Greg Hartman (CC BY-NC)

Calculus I Lab Manual (Portland Commuity College (CC BY SA)

Precalculus by OpenStax College ISBN: 9781938168345, Publication Date: 2014-10-23

Homework Software Systems

Additional Sources of Open Textbooks

Course materials: Lecture Videos, Interactive Simulations etc.

Featured Resources

Jhangiani, R., & Dastur, F. (2014, Oct.). Opening up psychology: Adopting open textbooks, open pedagogy, and an open philosophy in the classroom. Symposium at the 2014 Annual Conference on the Teaching of Psychology, Atlanta, GA. Resource List

NOBA Project textbooks 

NOBA Project Psychology Textbooks (Follow the license terms: CC BY NC SA 4.0)   Read about the NOBA Project

Introduction to Psychology "wikibook"

Introduction to Psychology (Carnegie Mellon Open Learning Initiative) CC BY NC SA 3.0

Principles of Psychology by Steven E. Wisecarver (email the author) (Follow the license terms: CC BY 4.0)

OpenStax Psychology textbook cover

 

 OpenStax Psychology includes ancillary resources (Follow the license terms: CC BY)\

 

Cover of Research Methods in Psychology. 5 star rating, ISBN 978-1-4533236-0-1, and URL for two reviews 

 Psychology as a Biological Science (Noba) http://noba.to/cv4ktxnq (Follow the license terms: CC BY NC SA)

Developmental Psychology from Boundless (freely available, editable but not openly licensed or freely downloadable).

Open course Lifespan Development (Saylor Foundation) Licence terms: CC BY Note: Needs updating.  See also Lifespan Development

eBooks on developmental psychology from University Libraries (no-additional-cost to students/faculty, but not openly licensed or editable. Downloading privileges vary by vendor platform.)

Open course Theories of Personality (Saylor Foundation) Licence terms: CC BY Note: Needs updating.

Personality & Pedagogy resource page

 

Open course: Psychology of Learning & Behavior (Saylor Foundation) Licence terms: CC BY Note: Needs updating.

eBooks on Learning and Behavior; Springer eBooks on Learning and Behavior. from University Libraries (no-additional-cost to students/faculty, but not openly licensed or editable. Downloading privileges vary by vendor platform.)

 Cognitive Psychology and Cognitive Neuroscience (BCCampus.ca) Terms: CC BY SA

Also in a Wiki-Books format

Principles of Social Psychology (1st International Edition) (BC Campus.ca) Terms: CC BY NC SA  (See the author's keynote presentation at the Open Textbook Summit - May 2015 Vancouver BC)

Principles of Social Psychology (original edition/Maryland) CC BY NC SA

eBooks on Social Psychology from University Libraries (no-additional-cost to students/faculty, but not openly licensed or editable. Downloading privileges vary by vendor platform.)

Abnormal Psychology: An e-text! (Dr. Caleb Lack, UCentral Oklahoma and Arkansas Tech University) (Terms: CC BY NC SA) The entire site, with the exception of DSM criteria is CC-licensed.

Abnormal Psychology - from Northwestern Michigan College

eBooks on Abnormal Psychology from University Libraries (no-additional-cost to students/faculty, but not openly licensed or editable. Downloading privileges vary by vendor platform.)

Abnormal Child Psychology - still working on this!

Open Course Industrial/Organizational Psychology (Saylor Foundation) Licence terms: CC BY Note: Needs updating.

BioInformatics/Neuroinformatics Course: CC BY ND (verbatim copying only; no changes allowed)

Open Course Neuropsychology (Saylor Foundation) Licence terms: CC BY Note: Needs updating.

VT Faculty, please contact Anita Walz arwalz@vt.edu if you cannot find the openly licensed resources for your area.

Open Textbooks

Edited chapters from many different institutions are available from OpenStax CNX.

Search for additional textbooks from the University of Minnesota Open Textbook Library

See CollegeOpenTextbooks for a wider variety of Lower-Division Undergraduate psychology open textbooks

Saylor Academy Open Courses (GitHub)

Course materials: Modules, Lecture Videos, Interactive Simulations etc.

Lectures:

Statistics in Psychosocial Research (Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, Open Courseware) CC BY NC SA

New Psychology of Depression (University of Oxford) CC BY NC SA

Open Yale psychology courses

Modules from CNX.org (Rice University) [Advanced search]

Psychology (higher ed level) resources from OER Commons

MERLOT

 

Additional resources

Search the National Center for Biotechnology Information Bookshelf (Some materials are Public Domain; others are under copyright)

Publications (booklets, brochures, fact sheets) from the National Institute of Mental Health

​​

Featured Resources

Principles of Macroeconomics by Timothy Taylor; OpenStax College, ISBN: 9781938168253, Publication Date: 2014-03-15, Electronic cost ($0). Print ~$30.

Supplementary Materials for Principles of Macroeconomics include: Getting Started Guide for Students, Sapling Learning($), Memory Science, and for Faculty only: Getting Started Guide for Faculty, Instructor Solutions Manual, Powerpoint Slides, MacroEconomics Test Bank, Sample Syllaus Language, Lumen Learning LMS integration, and Top Hat.

Principles of Microeconomics by Timothy Taylor; OpenStax College, ISBN: 9781938168246, Publication Date: 2014-03-15, Electronic cost ($0). Print ~$30.

Supplementary materials for Principles of Microeconomics include: Getting Started Guide for Students, Sapling Learning, Memory Science, and faculty-only resources including: Getting Started Guide for Faculty, Instructor Solutions Manual, Powerpoint slides, MicroEconomics Text Bank, Sample Syllabus Language, Lumen Learning LMS implementation, and Top Hat.

Open Textbooks

Microeconomics: Theory Through Applications by Cooper & John (CC BY-NC-SA) 

Money & Banking by Wright (CC BY-NC-SA)

​Additional economics textbooks listed by:

CollegeOpenTextbooks.org

University of Minnesota Open Textbook Library (search for "Economics") 

Course materials: Lecture Videos, Interactive Simulations etc.

See also

  • The Open Economics Working Group is run by the Open Knowledge Foundation in association with the Centre for Intellectual and Property Law (CIPIL) at the University of Cambridge. Its membership consists of leading academics and researchers, public and private sector economists, representatives from national and international public bodies and other experts from around the world.
    less...
    We want economics to be built on sound, transparent foundations, wherever possible. In particular, it is important that the data and associated analysis be openly available to all members of society.
    This Working Group exists to:
    Act as a central point of reference and support for those interested in open economic data.
    Identify best practice as well as legal, regulatory and technical standards for open economic data.
    Act as a hub for the development and maintenance of low-cost, community-driven projects related to open material in economics
    - See more at: http://openeconomics.net/#sthash.eCZT36ed.dpuf​

License

All original content on this page is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. 3rd-party content including, but not limited to images and linked items, are subject to their own license terms. CC BY License

Material in this page is based on original work by ​The University Libraries' Open Educational Resources (OER) initiative ​, and you can download, edit, and share the original for free under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license from: https://guides.lib.vt.edu/c.php?g=10479&p=53700​

 


License

All original content on this page is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. 3rd-party content including, but not limited to images and linked items, are subject to their own license terms. CC BY License

Material in this page is based on original work by ​The University Libraries' Open Educational Resources (OER) initiative ​, and you can download, edit, and share the original for free under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license from: https://guides.lib.vt.edu/c.php?g=10479&p=53700​