3
The first Rebus Foundation project underway is the Rebus Community for Open Textbook Creation. The design of the Community is an example of Benkler’s commons based system of peer production, whereby a large group of people collaborate to provide “information, knowledge or cultural goods” without relying on traditional market models or hierarchies to coordinate production[1]. The work of these large groups is facilitated by the technical infrastructure of networked digital technologies and the web, and members are generally driven to participate by intrinsic motivations. In the case of the Rebus Community, its platform takes the ease of production offered by digital, web-based technologies and elevates it from an individual pursuit to a collaborative one. Though it is true that an author might now be able to write, produce and publish their work more easily than ever before, there are still significant challenges in doing so which cannot be addressed by basic book production software. To take production to a new level, the Rebus Community has been designed as an online environment that connects a worldwide community of practice that recognises the value of Open content, as well as simple-to-use tools to maximise the benefits of a collaborative, digital-first publishing process. This level of collaborative peer production expands the pool of creators from the limited number that can be employed or commissioned by a traditional publisher to potentially thousands of contributors, allowing the scale of production to increase substantially and create an environment of content abundance.
The focus of the internship I have undertaken with the Rebus Foundation has been working with the other members of the Rebus team on the practical application of these broad concepts, designing and launching the first iteration of the Rebus Community platform. While a sketch of the different “parts” of the platform had been developed by the co-founders prior to securing funding and launching the Rebus Foundation proper, in the past six months the team has worked to flesh out the specifics of those initial ideas, creating detailed product briefs, deciding on priorities and crafting a launch strategy. This section will detail the results of this process to date, from strategic decisions to product design and the first projects to be shepherded through the creation process.
3.1 The Platform
The core offering of the Rebus Community project is a platform that connects people working on Open Textbooks, and that will enable them to develop a set of best practices for Open Textbook publishing in a digital world. Along with the higher level concept of peer production, the specific implementation of a community-based approach to publishing is informed by successful communities of practice in the Open Source world, mirroring the origins of Open Education as a whole. Community strategist Jono Bacon, who has decades of experience working with Open Source software communities, states that in order to be successful, a community that is collaborating to create new work needs three things to succeed; open communication, open licenses and open tools[2]. It is this environment the Rebus Community platform seeks to replicate. If successful, the scale and ubiquity of peer production seen in Open Source projects like Linux and Ubuntu can be achieved with Open Textbooks.
The first two parts of the platform, the forum and the production tool, have been launched at the time of writing, and the project management tool is expected to be available in an early form within another two months. The process to date has been focused on how best to identify and support the existing needs of Open Textbook creators, building pieces of software around the process that will eventually form a comprehensive set of tools and resources. In simple terms, the platform is intended to enable creators to talk about what they’re doing, to actually do it, and then to document it so that others can benefit from the collective expertise. With this goal in mind, the platform has been designed to consist of five parts:
- A static website that states the mission and provides general information about the project.
- A forum, where community members can communicate and discuss both specific questions and broad concepts within Open Textbook publishing (see Section 3.3).
- A project management tool that will allow users to track and collaborate on the various tasks involved with the publishing process (see Section 3.5).
- A book production tool, the Rebus Community Press (see Section 3.6).
- An evolving set of resources, managed by the community, to help anyone starting their own Open Textbook project or program.
Once all parts of the platform have been launched, there will be several ways for people to engage. Those working with Open Textbooks will be able to look through resources designed by the community related to Open Textbook programs and creation. Those who wish to will be able to sign up for an account that offers them access to a forum, where they can engage in discussion with other community members to expand their knowledge, find inspiration and guidance and contribute to answering others’ questions. In the forum they may also find collaborators for their own Open Textbook project or join an existing project in need of their particular skills. Once a participant in a project, they will be assigned preset tasks that form the publishing process and complete them in the book production interface, the Press. As a team coordinator, they will be able to centrally manage team roles and communications, book metadata and task management for each project. Teams will be able to form organically through forum communication and will have their collaborative processes facilitated by simple to use tools, resulting in a productive group of motivated actors sharing their skills with no promise of financial reward.
3.2 Objectives
In order to be successful, the Rebus Community must have a clear set of objectives to guide development. These objectives are to:
- Define, with community input, a clear process and best practices for publication of Open Textbooks.
- Grow a vibrant global, connected community of collaborators on Open Textbook creation.
- Make it easy for faculty, staff, students, volunteers, etc., to contribute to the creation of Open Textbooks (their own, or others’).
- Create many new, high-quality Open Textbooks, available for free to anyone, in a range of formats (web, epub, mobi, PDF, and print).
The first objective emerges in response to a need from those wanting to create Open Textbooks but who have no clear path to do so, and will also help to reduce the costs and complexities involved in publishing Open Textbooks. The basic premise is that the publishing process does not innately have to be undertaken by a “publisher” in the traditional sense. Instead, the tasks involved in the process can be managed and completed by a community of people, each contributing what they can, and sharing in the responsibilities of completing the project. However, that concept is predicated on a very general view of how publishing can be done. In order to create a concrete process, those who are doing the work must be the ones to shape the design.
With this in mind, the Rebus Community is enabling the creation of a model of publishing that meets the needs and wants of those involved with Open Textbook publishing, which can then be applied and improved over time as needs change. It is built around the principles of connection and collaboration between members of the Open Textbook community, which includes academics, librarians, OER advocates and many others. This group also includes the Rebus team themselves, who envision a symbiotic relationship with the community, where the expertise they develop is informed by those on the forefront of Open Textbook creation, and those who are creating can draw from the organisation’s expertise. Together, the community will be able to define a clear process and a set of best practices for Open Textbook publishing. What is more, the Community platform is dedicated to making every step of the publishing process clear and easy, in such a way that it opens participation to people beyond those with the expertise to write a chapter on, say, the political economy of digital media, or molecular compounds. This includes students, other university staff members and members of the public.
Finally, the very clear objective of the Community project is to make books. Alongside the forum for communication, all members have free access to Rebus Press as a production tool, and will eventually also be able to use Rebus Projects for project management, following the open source model of providing open tools in combination with open communication. This brings together the conceptual work of redefining the publishing process with the explicit work of making books, allowing each aspect to be informed by the other. This will result in a stronger, more sustainable system, and when participation is at a large scale, that system will produce textbooks in large numbers, contributing to a new era of the industry where content itself is widely and freely available, and the focus can shift to how content is used, rather than sold.
As discussed, the first of the three elements of a successful community is open communication, meaning the Rebus Community must begin with a method of communication for members. To facilitate this, the platform has been designed around a forum, where members can discuss their projects, challenges, ideas and general thoughts around Open Textbooks.
3.3 The Forum
In the initial platform design process, a forum was not recognised as a development priority. It was viewed by the technical team as a “nice to have” rather than an essential part of the product offering, and they instead focused on the project management software (see Section 3.5). But in discussing the details of the project management tool, it became clear that a mechanism for community members to discuss things not directly related to a single project was required, meaning that a place for communication should exist outside of the dedicated project space. As a result, I produced a product brief for a community forum (see Appendix A) and it became the first priority in the platform roll-out. A custom build was considered, but the team eventually settled on deploying an out of the box forum product, NodeBB. This particular option was chosen for its simple navigation and considerable plugin library that allows for customisation, both of which are important as the forum needs to be able to be flexible for all kinds of users.
This flexibility has also been taken into account in designing the initial setup that will be seen by the very first users who join the Community. Several categories have been created and seeded with content in order to give an early structure for community interactions, but this has been done with the understanding that the community itself will influence the forum structure as users’ organic interactions evolve. To begin, the broad categories are:
- New Here? Introduce yourself…—a place for people to introduce themselves and begin connecting with others.
- What is the Rebus Community & FAQ—basic information about the Community and platform
- Projects: Active Open Textbook Projects—for project-specific discussions before the project management tool is launched.
- Project: Help & Tech Support—this will be the main avenue for requesting technical support for Rebus Press and other kinds of help they need, allowing support to take place in the open, which reduces replication and will create a searchable resource for users.
- Programs: Management of Open Textbooks—discussions about adoption, institutional support and other challenges outside of the publishing process.
- The Future of the Rebus Community Tools (Comments & Feedback)—an open place for comments and feedback to reach the Rebus team, offering another avenue of communication to inform development.
The forum’s development will depend on engagement, and Rebus staff will continue to monitor and consider how best to accommodate and respond to the community’s needs. Community management requires building trust and respect, and modelling positive behaviours[3]. This has influenced some of the early content, including a personal introduction from the community manager, emphasising a shared belief in the value of Open content and excitement about the opportunity to collaborate, and broad community guidelines that essentially require members to “be nice”. Even knowing that all communities form their own norms and expectations over time, this framing of positive, productive communication is intended to set the right tone and over time, allow a positive model of community engagement to emerge.
Along with open communication, a community of co-creation requires open, permissive licenses to succeed. This ensures that all community members benefit from the work of others[4], and in the context of the Rebus Community, those benefits expand beyond its own community, to the community of Open Textbook creators worldwide. In addition, no deliberation on Open content can neglect a considered approach to licensing. It is a core part of the Open movement, subject to much debate, and complex to communicate. The following section will discuss the Rebus Community’s approach to licensing, and the implications it has for the Foundation’s goals.
3.4 Licensing Policy
The Rebus Community as an organisation intends to work with members of the community to establish best practices. However, with licensing, we decided to take an opportunity to be a leader, and deliberately guide the licensing conversation towards what they view as the best practice. As a result, Rebus mandates that all books produced through the Rebus Community must be licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0 (commonly referred to as CC-BY). This license states that the content under it can be freely shared and adapted so long as the original author is given proper credit. It is the most permissive of the Creative Commons licenses, and only content in the public domain license allows more uses. The team involved in the design of the Rebus Community view mandating CC-BY as an essential part of any new model for Open Textbook publishing, as well as being essential for building a vibrant ecosystem of Open content generally. This was subject much discussion, as licensing is a contentious issue for those creating Open content, and we knew that disallowing the use of non-commercial (NC), share alike (SA) and no derivative (ND) licenses could and probably would cause some potential authors to avoid the Rebus Community. However, we were confident in our reasoning, so created an FAQ that we hope will allay the fears of some coming the the Community, which can be found alongside our licensing policy.
In addition to asserting our stance on licensing for those in the Rebus Community, we also decided to reach out to others in the Open Textbook space and suggest that we release a joint statement on licensing for Open Textbooks. As a result, the Rebus policy and accompanying FAQ were adapted into a statement, co-signed by Mary Burgess (Executive Director, BCcampus), David Ernst (Executive Director, Open Textbook Network), David Wiley (Chief Academic Officer, Lumen Learning) and Rebus’ Hugh McGuire. The central argument is that unlike NC or ND licenses, a CC-BY license permits all of the “5R” best practices; the right to Retain, Reuse, Revise, Remix and Redistribute and the statement is a demonstration of a shared vision of what is best for the future of Open Textbooks, as well as an affirmation of Rebus’ policy. Looking beyond the creation of Open Textbooks, CC-BY licensed content, in abundance, is critical to enabling the kind of innovation that the Open Education movement is working towards. By licensing the content permissively, access to the content alone is no longer the major value proposition, driving innovation around new approaches to offering value to educators and students.
With open communication and open licenses in place, the next consideration for a successful community is open tools. For the Rebus Community, these tools are a project management tool built around the publishing process and the Rebus Community Press.
3.5 Project Management
With the forum taking priority, the project management software that was initially the major focus of the Community platform is currently still in development. Although some of the specifics of the software are yet to be determined, the product will be a key component of the Community platform and a powerful tool for creating a new, collaborative, democratic publishing process. The impact will be twofold; it will present tasks in such a way as to demystify the publishing process, and it will make the publishing process on a given textbook accessible to collaborators looking to take part. Participation will be clear and easy, with different levels of commitment welcome, depending on the project needs. This is inspired by the successful LibriVox model, which has seen over 10,000 public domain audiobook projects launched by a community of volunteers. Founded by Hugh McGuire in 2005, Librivox has successfully deployed a community approach to audiobook production, where anyone can contribute to recording chapters for a project, or complete a recording entirely on their own. With the right product design and community management, the Rebus Community should be able to achieve the same success with Open Textbooks, and take a strong step towards reducing the cost of production through an open, online collaborative workforce, much of it expected to be volunteer, and a tool that can be used by anyone launching an Open Textbook project.
The development process is actively being driven by the first projects to join the Community (see Section 3.7), with their progress being tracked and immediate needs prioritised in the features list. To date, the initial framework for the tool include:
- Clearly displayed book metadata
- Table of contents
- A list of users, with expertise and project roles indicated
- A project-specific discussion board
- Defined tasks that can be assigned and tracked (e.g. chapter authoring, copy editing, image sourcing, formatting)
Early versions of these features can be seen in a forum project page and other necessary features and a definitive list of tasks will emerge from interactions with community members and the progression of the pilot projects.
3.6 The Press
Of course, to fulfill their goals, every member of the Rebus Community will need to have access to book production tools, which are provided through the Rebus Community Press[5]. The Press is dedicated exclusively to use by members of the Community, and offers a simple but powerful tool for producing their textbooks in a range of formats. The Press is powered by Pressbooks, an open source book production software.
3.6.1 Powered by Pressbooks
Pressbooks provides book production software to individual users (on Pressbooks.com) and to institutional users through private networks. Pressbooks offers users an online book production tool, built on WordPress, that uses a familiar blogging format and HTML+CSS structure that can then be converted to professional looking ebooks, print-ready PDFs and webbooks. The software eliminates the need for traditional book design software, as well as complicated ebook conversion, meaning that using Pressbooks can radically reduce the cost of production for publishers, small and large. Traction has been gained with three audiences—self-publishers, academic presses and non-traditional publishers at academic institutions —that have different requirements and processes than traditional trade publishers, part of which is the need for reduced costs and complexity of production. There is also arguably slightly less importance placed on book design with these audiences. This is not to say that Pressbooks books are not well designed (they are), but the software does not allow for the unlimited control and variation offered by a program such as InDesign[6]. Instead, users can choose from a selection of around 50 customizable themes, each designed to suit different styles and genres, which can then be further modified by accessing the CSS stylesheets to make more complex changes. It removes much of the guesswork for those unfamiliar with book design conventions, removes the necessity to develop the expertise required with a program like InDesign, and considerably speeds up the process.
In offering this service to the Rebus Community, the Foundation ensures that those creators benefit from the speed and low cost of web-first production and content management[7]. Many content industries are faced with this shift in light of the digital revolution, moving beyond current digital production options to those that are web-native, enabling the innate agility, connectivity and customization that web-based technologies offer in the book production sphere. Users benefit from the same advantages of other web tools they have come to accept as standard; cloud storage, access from any internet connected device, simplified version control, shared user access to central copies and opportunities to customise through accessible CSS and plugins. What is more, this method of production is specifically designed to interact with other digital formats, including importing Microsoft Word and WordPress XML files and exporting ebooks, PDF and XHTML. This helps Pressbooks overcome a significant limitation of many of these formats—particularly PDF, EPUB, Word and Adobe design formats—which are not easily integrated with other systems. This limitation is most often informed by commercial imperatives rather than a user-centric approach, and built into the design of the programs. However, increasingly, as the web informs user expectations around access, ease of use and integration, these formats must no longer be viewed as the standard for production and content management. While perhaps appropriate for specific uses, it is no longer reasonable to view them as central to the production process when an HTML+CSS based approach can offer many of the benefits of all of them, without the limitations.
Pressbooks also serves as a content management system (CMS), allowing centralised, collaborative creation and and modification of digital content. It combines the power of a web-based CMS with a not only a (book-like) web output, but several other non-web based formats for different purposes. This unique combination has the potential to move digital book production into the next major phase of activity [8] and is indispensable to the Rebus vision of a new, dynamic digital publishing process, resulting in books in a standard, web-native format.
3.6.2 Connections with the Rebus Community
The Rebus Community Press is considered an integral part of the Community platform. More than just being accessible to members of the Rebus Community, the Press will be integrated with the other Community tools. In particular, it will be integrated with the project management software to allow seamless communication between the two. Actions may be triggered in either interface and appear in the other. For example, when a new book project is created in the Community, a corresponding book shell may be created automatically in the Press and vice versa. These connections are consistent with the expectations of users who are familiar with integrated approaches like the Google suite of products and even connections between social media platforms. The seamless transition between platforms is essential to offer the best experience possible to users, and maximise ease of production. In addition to the products speaking to each other, users will be able to create a single user account that can be used across several different applications. This means that instead of requiring one login for the Press, another for the forum and yet another for the projects tool, accounts will be managed centrally. However, while it is an integral part of the Community platform, it will not always be the only production option available to community members. For the time being it will be the only production tool connected to the Community, but considering the Rebus principles of openness and accessibility, it has never been the intention to restrict Community users to Rebus Press.
3.7 The Pilot
Pilots offer an opportunity to test hypotheses, gather information, understand potential impacts for users, build buy-in and lower the risk of failure[9], all of which are paramount for an innovative (and as such somewhat high risk) project with limited funding, such as the Rebus Community. What is more, just as the Community is dedicated to creating a collaborative model of Open Textbook publishing, creating the Community itself is also a collaborative process. The design so far has been informed by conversations with those already working in the Open Textbook industry, as well as the experiences of many Open Textbook creators using Pressbooks for production (see section 4.1). However, there remain many unanswered questions. To address this, Rebus decided to launch the Community with a pilot.
The planning process around the pilot has seen the most changes throughout the months of pre-launch planning. Initially, it was expected that it would be limited, accepting only a small number of participants from a handful of institutions with whom we had existing contacts through networks like the Open Textbook Network, BCcampus and OpenOregon. A comprehensive process was designed to manage these participants, clearly setting out expectations and onboarding them through a series of communications. It was expected that through one-on-one interviews, surveys, regular web meetings and the forum, this limited group of participants would provide the insights needed to guide the development of the project management tool, and begin to identify areas of need that the Rebus Community could address. This approach relied on the network connections fostered by McGuire through Pressbooks’ popularity with Open Textbook creators, and the commitment of their members. However, as the forum was being prepared for launch, a technical difficulty arose around being able to limit who could sign up to the forum, which prompted some reflection on the merits of a limited pilot, considering that the success of the Community to enable people to find collaborators relies on large numbers of members, which would take time to build. As a result, the pilot was heavily revised.
In its new iteration, the Community platform is open to anyone who would like to join, but in order to ensure the kind of detailed insight into the process that is required to guide development, the Rebus team have committed to a shepherding 10 key projects through the publication process, offering a far greater level of support and engagement than will be offered to projects in the future. The projects are being pursued according to three criteria; an interesting topic or approach that will excite anyone hearing about it, an engaged lead editor or author who is committed to Open Education and trying new approaches, and an agreement to publish under a CC-BY license. Less concretely, Rebus is also looking for projects with different needs and that are in different stages of the process, so that they offer a wide range of case studies in how the Rebus model can offer value. Four such projects have been confirmed so far:
Introduction to Philosophy: Christina Hendricks of the University of British Columbia is a Professor of Teaching in the Philosophy department and an Open Education advocate. She has been looking to create an Open Introduction of Philosophy for some time, but does not have the time to commit to managing the project. With Rebus staff as project managers, the project has launched, with a group of around 20 international contributors volunteering so far. The table of contents is in the process of being refined and the book is expected to be completed in September 2017.
The Open Anthology of Earlier American Literature: Professor Robin DeRosa of Plymouth State University is well-known for her approach to Open pedagogy and practice. She began this anthology with her students in Early American Studies, but has since changed departments and no long has the capacity to see the project through to completion. Instead, she has offered to help find a new lead editor, who will then work with Rebus staff to expand the anthology to include more texts and eventually serve as a competitor to the well-known Norton, Heath and Bedford anthologies. This particular approach of creating an Open anthology of texts in the public domain has the potential to be applied in other subject areas.
History of Science and Technology: Led by Danielle Skjelver of the Universities of Maryland and North Dakota, she and a team of editors have developed the project scope and table of contents, and begun to solicit chapter contributions. Rebus will be helping to expand that group of contributors and guide them through the rest of the publishing process.
Global Regions (Cultural Geography): This book was initially under contract with Oxford University Press, but they terminated the agreement. With the content already completed, the lead author, John Agnew of UCLA, and his co-editor Kris Olds of the University of Wisconsin decided to release the book as an Open Textbook instead. Rebus will be helping to develop and manage an appropriate reviewing process, support the formatting of the manuscript as a web-based book and encouraging adoptions.
Feedback on the Rebus tools, resources and processes by engaging directly in these projects, as well as through surveys, forum participation and monthly webinar drop-in sessions as the number of Community members grows. Guiding the collection of feedback are the following questions:
- What are the specific tasks involved in creating an Open Textbook?
- How can we build a model where volunteers will contribute time and energy to those tasks?
- What are the major challenges that arise during that process?
- What smaller challenges or inefficiencies arise during the process?
- How might those challenges be solved by a community of practice?
- How might those challenges be solved by a technological solution?
As discussed in section 3.5, the answers to these questions are already informing the design of the product management software component of the platform, and they will also drive the focus of the community management strategy. A core guiding principle of the process so far has been responsiveness and the ability to pivot in response to feedback. That approach has been borrowed from lean startup strategies, and is indispensable for a project predicated on collaborative development.
- Benkler, Y., and Nissenbaum, H. "Commons-based Peer Production and Virtue." Journal of Political Philosophy 14, no. 4 (2006): 394-419. doi:10.1111/j.1467-9760.2006.00235.x. ↵
- Bacon, Jono. The Art of Community. O'Reilly, 2009. ↵
- ibid. ↵
- ibid. ↵
- The Rebus Community Press name is intended to allude to a printing press, not a publishing house Press as might be expected. The name is meant to represent the new kind of production it enables, that will hopefully have an enduring impact on book production conventions. ↵
- Importantly, any limits in book design are not inherent to the system, and are more a question of limited development resources. Any institutional user could employ or commission a CSS developer to create a custom theme (or themes), and contributions to development, either in the form of funding or expertise, are welcome, and could considerably improve what is possible with the system. ↵
- Maxwell, J. and Fraser, K. "Traversing The Book of Mpub: an Agile, Web-first Publishing Model." The Journal of Electronic Publishing 13, issue 3. ↵
- ibid. ↵
- DeLayne Stroud, J. To Pilot or Not To Pilot. SixSigma. ↵