Open Educational Resources (OER) & Textbook Equity

"My students were absolutely thrilled when they found out they did not have to purchase a textbook for this course."
-Dr. Erika Bass, Assistant Professor of English Education, editor of Critical Writing about Literature: ENG 2120.

Whether you want to adapt existing openly-licensed material, share your own teaching materials with the world, or create a new workbook, textbook, or lab manual entirely from scratch, Rod Library can provide various levels of support for open publishing projects. 

Services we currently provide for OER authors:

• Project management support

• Assistance with determining and documenting fair use of copyrighted materials

• Assistance locating and evaluating openly-licensed or public domain materials that can be included and/or adapted with attribution

• Assistance considering accessibility best practices

• Guidance about licensing options for the final free work 

• Assistance for using the Manifold software for publishing free, openly-licensed ebooks

• Assistance facilitating peer review for open textbooks

• Archiving final works in UNI ScholarWorks & assistance with publicizing

• Providing resources for faculty to advocate that OER-related work “count” for promotion, tenure, and faculty evaluation

• Advocacy for consistent funding to support faculty author time and labor

  • UNI OER authors have been compensated more than $100,000 since 2021. Only $15,000 of that was university funds & the remainder was CARES Act funding distributed by the Iowa Dept. of Education through the Governor's Emergency Education Relief (GEER) Fund.

We do not currently provide:

• Copyediting (note that Research & Sponsored Programs may maintain a list of freelance editors; we can also provide referrals to outside companies that provide high-quality publishing support on a paid basis)
• Extensive work with copyright permissions
• Support for publishing projects that will charge readers or subscribers.
• Support for publishing projects that will not bear a Creative Commons license (with some exceptions for student-authored work. Note we do archive materials that are under traditional copyright, along with openly-licensed projects, in UNI ScholarWorks)

Want to find out more? Contact your liaison librarian and Anne Marie Gruber, Textbook Equity Librarian. We will meet with you to discuss your project and determine how Rod Library can best support you.

While Rod Library faculty/staff cannot give legal advice, and this is an evolving area, here are some general tips to consider: 

• UNI hasn't created specific guidelines regarding the use of generative AI tools in OER authoring/adaptation. There are a number of excellent resources on this topic, such as Affordable Learning Georgia's Guidelines for Using Generative AI Tools in Open Educational Resources. 
   
• From a copyright standpoint, AI-generated output is in the public domain in many cases. Assigning a Creative Commons license to most AI-generated output would not be advised since that is more restrictive than public domain. See U.S. Copyright Office 2025 report on Copyright and Artificial Intelligence: Part 2 Copyrightability.
   
• Some AI-related legal issues are still being worked out, particularly related to the content used to train AI tools (typically it's done without the copyright holders' permission). Legal issues are likely to continue evolving over time.
   
• Using copyrighted materials to prompt AI tools without the copyright holder's permission is potentially problematic. Using openly-licensed materials to prompt AI tools, on the other hand, is fine as long as you give attribution and adhere to the license of the original work.
   
• The ethical questions of AI for OER generation really relate to the same issues AI presents in teaching/learning contexts, ie. AI tools use a lot of environmental resources, there is potential for bias and inaccuracy, an author with their name on a work is ultimately responsible for the content, etc.
   
• From a privacy and security standpoint, I would recommend instructors and researchers who want to use AI tools use Co-Pilot as provided by UNI IT, and carefully review UNI's AI guidelines. UNI IT can advise in more detail about the specific software and UNI guidelines.