Contributing Authors plan, write, and revise textbook content for the Open Curriculum Development Project. Please read Unit 0 for an introduction to the entire project.

Contributing Authors work with the Lead Author and the project team to draft the project plan, determine the chapter structure, and incorporate feedback from the Developmental Editor and external reviewers. Contributing Authors are individually responsible for completing their writing assignment, which is usually 2 textbook chapters but may follow a different model depending on project needs.

Contributing Authors receive a two-year stipend for their contribution based on the writing assignments listed below.

• Case studies – $500 / ~500-999 words
• Parts of chapters – $1,000 / ~1,000–4,999 words / recurring chapter elements across chapters
• One chapter – $2,000 / ~5,000–10,000 words
• More than one chapter – $2,000 per chapter

This role is not an hourly or salaried position. The weekly time commitment varies depending on milestones and deadlines. Past participants have reported that the time commitment was greater than they expected, so please consider your availability carefully!

Contracts and payment schedules are created upon your acceptance of the Contributing Author role, in line with your institution’s practices, to:

• Maintain communication with the project support team, the Lead Author, and your author team.
• Attend Open Curriculum Development training by completing assigned tasks and participating in online meetings.
• Analyze existing course and textbook materials relating to your assignment.
• Contribute to the {Course #} About this Book document, providing input on alignment between chapter-level objectives, equity statement, and planned textbook content.
• Write new content or remix existing openly licensed content for one or more textbook chapters in a shared Google Drive folder. This content includes learning objectives, keywords, and discussion questions in addition to core content.
• Provide domain expertise in theory, methods, assessment, or other specialized areas across the textbook development project.
• Create or find supplemental educational material for your chapters and the textbook. These materials may include media like podcasts or videos, discussion questions, case studies, or community learning opportunities. Chapter content should support flexible teaching modalities and meet project accessibility standards.
• Incorporate feedback from Developmental Editor and external reviewers to prepare chapters for classroom pilots and handoff to the Revising Author.

Related Roles

• Contributing Authors may choose to pilot the curriculum in Year 2 of the project. This step is paid as a separate effort. See Pilot Instructor for more information.
• Contributing Authors may be offered the Revising Author role to prepare the manuscript for launch based on feedback from peer reviewers, pilot instructors, and students in Year 3 of the project. This step is paid as a separate effort. See Revising Author for more information.

Timeline and Deliverables

This table shows the major phases of work by the Contributing Author (subject to change).

Contributing Author Catchup

Contributing Authors may be recruited on a rolling basis during this project. If you started at a midpoint of the project and haven’t been following along with the training, you’ll need to get oriented.

In this situation, please make time to review the following resources to make sure that your work will fit into the book that you’re contributing to:

• {Course #} About This Book: This document has all the information that you need to understand the plan for the book.
• Unit 0: This unit introduces you to the Open Curriculum Project.
• Year 1, Unit 1, Open Curriculum Example Chapter and Course Pack: This section provides examples of what your completed project will look like at the end of the process.
• Year 1, Unit 1, Curriculum Design with an Equity Lens: This section introduces the criteria for success and instructional design approaches that this project uses.
• Year 1, Unit 2: This unit explains what it means to share your work with an open license and shows you how to follow the project’s attribution requirements.
• Year 1, Units 6, Unit 7, and Unit 8: These units explain how authors draft whole chapters for our projects. If you are drafting a section or recurring chapter element, work with the Project Manager to find the relevant materials that apply to your assignment.
• Year 1, Unit 9, Chapter Revision Logistics: This section explains how to revise your work after the first round of feedback from the developmental editor.

Licenses and Attributions for Contributing Author

“Contributing Author” by Open Oregon Educational Resources is licensed under CC BY 4.0.