Timeline for Why would an academic write a textbook for free?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
13 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jul 14, 2017 at 2:33 | comment | added | Cody Gray - on strike | It would certainly be departmental culture, then. Note that I'm not saying it was common in my experience to teach from textbooks. In fact, in upper-division courses especially, it was quite rare. (If the department mandated a textbook, most professors treated it as supplemental to lectures and other primary sources, if they even recommended that students actually purchase it.) But I almost never had or heard of any professor providing "detailed handouts they had written specifically for the course". Not that I think this is a bad idea—I'd be all for it. It's just very rare in my experience. | |
| Jul 10, 2017 at 15:58 | comment | added | user67075 | @PeterTaylor your comment is basically what I had in mind. | |
| Jul 10, 2017 at 15:48 | comment | added | Peter Taylor | @CodyGray, I attended a well-known university in the UK. Only one of my lecturers taught from a textbook, and she was the author. A few of them left it to us to write notes, but the majority provided us with detailed handouts they had written specifically for the course. I'm not sure whether it was "part of the job", but it certainly seemed to be part of the departmental culture. | |
| Jul 9, 2017 at 11:51 | comment | added | user67075 | @CodyGray It seems people are reading my answer in a narrower sense than I intented so my bad for phrasing it that way but fixing my answer with an edit would probably cause more harm than good. Anyways answers by other posters point out that academics do lots of things for free as part of their duties. | |
| Jul 9, 2017 at 11:31 | comment | added | Cody Gray - on strike | I personally attended a large research university in the United States, and have many friends who attended similar top tier research universities in the USA as well, yet I have seen a professor produce lecture notes like the ones you cite maybe once ever. It was in physics, and it was because this person was convinced that no one else who had ever written a textbook understood physics as well as they did. In other words, one of those people that occupy the zone somewhere between genius and crackpot. So the claim that it's "part of the job" to produce these notes seems specious to me. | |
| Jul 8, 2017 at 17:33 | comment | added | user67075 | @BenCrowell Here's an example of what I have in mind: thphys.uni-heidelberg.de/~weigand/QFT2-14/SkriptQFT2.pdf I do not if this person will transform these notes into a book, but it's certainly part of his job to produce this kind of lecture notes. | |
| Jul 8, 2017 at 17:29 | comment | added | user67075 | @NormanGray There is a balance certainly, and academics under pressure to publish will devote their efforts to where the labor will be more productive, especially if they are not tenured. | |
| Jul 8, 2017 at 17:27 | comment | added | user67075 | @BenCrowell Preparing and organizing material (most commonly in written form) for courses is what academics are supposed to do. These course notes are often the basis of textbooks (in disciplines where there are textbooks of course). | |
| Jul 8, 2017 at 16:46 | comment | added | Norman Gray | Promotion and tenure are helped by publishing research; in a research-intensive university those prospects are not helped, and may even be hindered by publishing textbooks (see ‘don’t write a book’ in ‘how to get tenure’ | |
| Jul 8, 2017 at 16:42 | comment | added | user1482 | Because in many situations it is part of their job, or at least should be part of their job. You lost me at this first sentence. I'm not aware of any educational system in which writing a textbook is part of an academic's job. | |
| Jul 8, 2017 at 15:09 | comment | added | user67075 | @darijgrinberg i don't completely disagree although there are instances of instructors forcing students to buy self-published books by the instructor at vastly inflated prices, with production cost sufficiently low to guarantee the instructor a few outings at good restaurants. | |
| Jul 8, 2017 at 15:03 | comment | added | darij grinberg | The parts of the profit from an academic book that go to the author are so minuscule (with few rare exceptions, such as popular textbooks) that the question at the end of your answer is far more rhetorical than you seem to intend it :) | |
| Jul 8, 2017 at 12:17 | history | answered | user67075 | CC BY-SA 3.0 |