Rice University-based publisher OpenStax College and the American Society for Microbiology Press have announced a partnership to produce Microbiology, a new introductory-level textbook due for release in spring 2016 that will be free online and low-cost in print.
The collaborative publishing agreement - the first for each partner - will produce a peer-reviewed, open-copyright textbook. More than 300,000 U.S. college students take an introductory microbiology course for allied health majors each year, and the new book could save them an estimated $30 million over the next four years, according to Richard Baraniuk, the founder and director of OpenStax College and Rice's Victor E. Cameron Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering.
OpenStax College, which launched with two titles in 2012, publishes free, full-colour, peer-reviewed textbooks for the nation's most-attended college courses. Its 10 current titles have been adopted by instructors in more than 1,600 courses worldwide and have saved students more than $38 million. In addition to Microbiology, OpenStax College plans to add 10 more titles by 2017.
ASM Press, the book publishing division of the American Society for Microbiology, publishes textbooks, references, monographs and general-interest titles that are used as the foundational texts in colleges and universities and as reference materials in laboratories and governmental agencies around the world.
ASM's latest curriculum guidelines were adopted in 2012 in response to the American Association for the Advancement of Science's 'Vision and Change Report,' which recommended sweeping changes to biology and life sciences curricula based on input from thousands of life sciences educators worldwide.
