UNT Open Texts is a collaborative effort of the UNT Press and the UNT Libraries to support full-time UNT faculty, including instructors and lecturers, who wish to publish an open access textbook for use in UNT courses.
Texts will be made free to read online, via our Open Books website, with a low-cost print edition available for purchase by students at UNT and elsewhere. Such open access textbooks can help reduce the cost of education for students, allow faculty more flexibility in tailoring material to their courses, and support UNT’s larger commitment to open access.
The UNT Press and the UNT Libraries will act as co-publishers of all texts funded through this program. Accepted manuscripts will undergo peer review as a university press publication.
For each project, the UNT Press will provide $2,500, to be disbursed as a task payment, once the UNT Press editorial board has approved the final manuscript for publication, you and the UNT Press have signed a contract, and you have delivered the final manuscript ready for production to the UNT Press. This funding will be provided in lieu of paying royalties on sales. As part of UNT's support for affordability, an additional task payment of up to $7,500 is available for contracts signed and final manuscripts submitted before August 1, 2023. Supplemental funding may also be available for projects that UNT Press declines to publish but which you publish elsewhere with a similar open license.
Task payments may be divided among UNT collaborators on a project as they wish. A limited pool of funding for this program is eligible to be shared with non-UNT collaborators.
If you would like to be considered for this program, please fill out the inquiry form. [Applications are closed for FY23]
After initial review by the UNT Libraries, you will be asked to provide a letter of support from your department’s current chair or promotion & tenure committee chair acknowledging that this publication will count for evaluation purposes, as appropriate to your department's guidelines. You will then work with UNT Press staff to shape your project into a textbook manuscript ready for peer review by expert readers and for approval by the UNT Press's editorial board, the necessary steps before a publication contract may be issued.
Proposals will be evaluated on the basis of:
- Relevance to a specific course or courses currently taught at UNT.
- Originality of content, organization, or approach in presenting the material for teaching purposes.
- Cost-savings to students when compared to the cost of a traditional textbook for the course.
If you have questions about this program, please contact scholarlycommunication@unt.edu
Interested instead in adopting or adapting existing OER for use in a course at UNT? See OER Grants!