 WITH MORE THAN 100 PUBLISHING PARTNERSHIPS NOW IN PLACE, ACADEMICPUB MOVES TO OFFER CUSTOM SOLUTIONS Higher Education Unit of SharedBook Inc. Adds Elsevier to Content Library, Signs "White Label" Deal with Kendall Hunt |
 CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS AND ECCH HEADLINE TEN NEW PARTNERSHIPS FOR ACADEMICPUB |
I am a professor who, on more than one occasion in the past, has taught custom courses for which there was no clearly applicable text, and who has had to haggle with publishers over the use of copyrighted content. In the end, I had to make do with teaching the courses using assorted handouts and lecture only, which was a disservice both the to students and to the nature of the material I was trying to present.
Having recently seen a demonstration of AcademicPub at a national American Chemical Society conference, I was impressed by its ability to clear copyrights in a matter of moments from its library of source material. When combined with content provided by the author in PDF or MS Word format and content from the WWW, a suitable textbook can be constructed with relative ease compared to traditional publishing. The system also provides live tracking of royalty costs during the compilation of material, making it easier to select materials that will keep the end product affordable to students. Naturally, all of the advantages of a custom text apply as well, most notably the timeliness of the material, which has become an expectation of today's Internet Age students.
AcademicPub, lets professors build "textbooks" by pulling content from the Web, clearing copyright in real time when necessary; from its own library, which includes pre-cleared content from a number of academic publishers; and from the professors' own files. As the professor builds the book, AcademicPub keeps a running tally of how much it will cost for students. If a professor thinks the price of the book is getting too high, she can ax certain parts or substitute in content from open sources.You can read the whole article here.
