We are seeking contributions to volumes in an open textbook series for Introduction to Philosophy courses.
The series is targeted at 100-level college courses, and is being put together by Christina Hendricks of the University of British Columbia, with the support of The Rebus Community, a non-profit initiative, developing new collaborative models for publishing free/open textbooks and other academic works. The books will be freely available to students and faculty and openly licensed to enable revision and reuse.
You can find more information about the book series on this page on the Rebus Community forum. We plan to release three volumes in the series within the next few months: Ethics, Logic, and Philosophy of Mind, and also Philosophy of Religion and Aesthetics shortly after that.
Chapter authors
We are seeking chapter authors for the following books. Please see the public table of contents for chapters still needed and links to the chapter descriptions.
- Metaphysics
- Epistemology
- Social and Political Philosophy (note that we’re also seeking an editor for this book, so the chapter outline may change)
- Philosophy of Science
We are looking for people with a PhD in philosophy, ideally with teaching experience at the first-year level. PhD students in philosophy may also be considered as authors, or can contribute in other ways to the book. We welcome and encourage contributions from members of underrepresented groups within the community of academic philosophy.
Book editor
We are seeking an editor for the Social and Political Philosophy book, after the previous editor stepped away from the project. There is an outline of chapters already drafted, and a few chapters have been written. We will keep the chapters already written or being written but otherwise the book could potentially be revised according to what a new editor would like to see in it.
Peer reviewers
We are looking for two peer reviewers for the Philosophy of Religion textbook, edited by @beau.branson.
We are particularly seeking people with either a PhD in philosophy or who are in a PhD graduate program, ideally with experience teaching (or being a Teaching Assistant) at the first-year level. Still, we recognize that people with different backgrounds and experiences have valuable things to offer so please get in touch if you’re interested. Even if you don’t end up being a peer reviewer there are likely other ways you could contribute to this book or other books in the series!
We have a peer review guide that can give you more information on what it means to be a peer reviewer for the project, and you can see the outline of chapters for the Philosophy of Religion book to get a sense of what you’ll be reviewing. We ask reviewers to read through and comment on the whole book, because that way they can get a better sense of how the chapters work together as a whole and speak to each other.
Content input and formatting
Finally, we are looking for volunteers to help with entering and formatting chapters from completed textbooks in the series into Pressbooks (a WordPress based platform for book creation). Ideal volunteers will have experience working in Pressbooks, or decent familiarity with Wordpress.
Expressing interest, asking questions
If you’re interested in contributing in one of the ways above, please sign up on the volunteer thread for this book series on the Rebus Community forum. If you have questions about the project or the books, you can contact Christina Hendricks, lead editor for the project, and if it’s about a specific book she can put you in touch with the book editor. If you have questions about the Rebus Community, please contact Apurva Ashok.