Textbooks that are freely available with nonrestrictive licenses. Covering a wide range of disciplines, open textbooks are available to download and print in various file formats from several web sites and OER repositories. Open textbooks can range from public domain books to existing textbooks to textbooks created specifically for OER. Open textbooks help solve the problems of the high cost of textbooks, book shortages, and access to textbooks as well as providing the capacity to better meet local teaching and learning needs.
-- Openstax CNX
BC Campus Open Textbooks operates BC Campus OpenEd, which is a repository of openly licensed e-textbooks, more than 50 of which were developed and/or extensively adapted by faculty at the University of British Columbia for use by the institution's students, faculty, and others. The textbooks cover arts, business, education, health, law, recreation/tourism, sciences, social sciences, trades, and upgrading programs. The textbooks are available under a CC-BY 4.0 or CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.
FreeTechBooks is a website that curates and aggregates links to books, textbooks, lecture notes, and other materials that deal with computer science, engineering, and programming, which are freely available over the internet. Many of the books listed are available under a CC license; however, others are under copyright and are made available to users for personal use only.
IntechOpen is a London-based open access publisher of scientific e-books, which cover physical sciences, engineering, and technology; life sciences; health sciences; and social sciences and humanities. In total, the organization publishes and provides free access to more than 4,200 e-books. In almost all cases, full-text access to the e-books is not provided, but instead select chapters in each book are openly published and available under a CC license. IntechOpen is a good source to search for topics in the physical and applied sciences for graduate-level courses.
The OAPEN Library works with publishers "to build a quality-controlled collection of open access books" and to provide "services for publishers, libraries, and research funders in the areas of dissemination, quality assurance and digital preservation," according to its website. The subject areas include society and social sciences; humanities; economics, finance, business and management; mathematics and science; literature and literary studies; the arts; medicine; law; and languages. Not all of the e-books available in OAPEN's repository are CC licensed, and a number have ND licenses, which limits their use at some universities.
OpenStax is a nonprofit educational company located at Rice University that seeks to improve student access to education. It publishes free, open e-textbooks in a number of subject areas, including math, science, social sciences, humanities, business, and advanced placement for high school students. The organization's products are typically released under a CC-BY 3.0 or 4.0 license.
The Open Textbook Library is a repository of open e-textbooks that is run by the Center for Open Education at the University of Minnesota. The library includes more than 600 high-quality openly licensed textbooks in a variety of subject areas, including business, marketing, finance, communications, and other humanities-related areas. Most of the textbooks are published by UM Libraries without attribution, at the request of the original publisher, and are made available under a CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.
Open Textbooks SUNY is an open access publishing program established by the State University of New York that provides tools and know-how to SUNY faculty to assist with the development of open textbooks and OER materials and serves as the repository for all SUNY-produced OERs. Currently there are more than 50 OER textbooks available through the site, covering mathematics, physics, medicine, chemistry, and the social sciences. Open SUNY has also begun offering open access to two of its courses that are based totally on OERs: Introductory Astronomy and Introductory Psychology. All Open SUNY textbooks are available under a CC license, most often a CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.
Textbook Revolution is a student-run site "dedicated to increasing the use of free educational materials by teachers and professors," according to the organization's website. The site includes links and reviews of textbooks and select educational resources. Many of the resources included are not open but are copyrighted with all rights reserved. Others are available under a CC or GNU license, or are in the public domain. The website provides no statistics as far as the number of books/resources curated and available on the site.