Pressbooks Around the World: Collaborative Publishing Across Borders

Join us for our second installment of Pressbooks Around the World, where we’ll explore what becomes possible when open publishing crosses national lines through a deep dive into an impressive international collaboration: Digital Resilience of ePortfolios During and Beyond the COVID-19 Pandemic: Lessons for the Future.

This openly licensed publication brought together 85 authors from around the globe to examine how ePortfolios supported teaching, learning, and professional practice during and after the COVID-19 pandemic. Developed collaboratively across institutions, countries, and educational contexts, the project offers a compelling example of what international open publishing looks like in practice.

In this session, members of the project team will share the story behind the book: how the collaboration formed, how contributors were coordinated across time zones and institutional cultures, and how Pressbooks supported the editorial and publishing workflow from concept to completion.

We’ll go behind the scenes on the opportunities and challenges of managing a large-scale international OER project, including questions of communication, editorial structure, contributor engagement, and shared ownership. Panelists will also reflect on what they’re most proud of, what surprised them during the process, and what they would do differently next time.

Some key questions we’ll explore:

• What makes international open collaboration different from single-institution publishing?
• How do you build a shared vision across different educational traditions and institutional contexts?
• What structures and workflows help large distributed author teams collaborate effectively?
• How can open publishing projects foster meaningful global participation and knowledge sharing?
• What lessons from this project can others apply to future international collaborations?