An Introduction to the ROMe Project

This blog post was written by Steve Stapleton, Associate Director – Learning Technology, University of Nottingham.

As part of the Jisc Collections funded e-textbook project the University of Nottingham has created and self-published two e-textbooks in two different subject areas. This will hopefully help address the question of whether institutional publication models can help provide a more affordable higher education, and promote a better, more sustainable information environment for libraries, students and faculty.

The title of the first e-textbook is Applied Ethics. This was authored by academic staff members from the Department of Philosophy. Nottingham’s Department of Philosophy is a centre of excellence in research and teaching and especially strong in the areas of metaphysics, mind and language, and ethics.

The title of the second e-textbook is Corporate Responsibility & Sustainability in Practice. The authoring of this publication was be led by a team from the International Centre for Corporate Social Responsibility (ICCSR) at Nottingham University Business School. The ICCSR was established in 2002 with the aim of leading the international development of responsible and sustainable corporate practice. The Business School team partnered with the Institute of Corporate Responsibility and Sustainability (ICRS), which is the new not-for-profit body being established to identify, recognise, promote and support high standards of practice by individual Corporate Responsibility and Sustainability professionals.

The University of Nottingham acted as the publisher of both titles but different business and distribution models were used for each. Applied Ethics was published as an Open Educational Resource (OER) under a Creative Commons licence. Corporate Responsibility & Sustainability in Practice was published using a Freemium model, with some versions of escalating functionality and support being offered to different audiences.

The e-textbooks (along with some other self-published e-textbooks from Nottingham) can be found at: http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/open/ebooksandibooks.aspx

Two posts will follow on the specifics of the Nottingham project: 6C model and dissemination.

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