Mathematics education at the beginning university level is closely tied to the traditional publishers. In my opinion, it gives them too much control of both cost and content. The main goal of most publishers is profit, and the result has been a sales-driven business model as opposed to a pedagogical one. This results in frequent new “editions” of textbooks motivated largely to reduce the sale of used books rather than to update content quality. It also introduces copyright restrictions which stifle the creation and use of new pedagogical methods and materials. The overall result is high cost textbooks which may not meet the evolving educational needs of instructors and students.

To be fair, publishers do try to produce material that reflects new trends. But their goal is to sell books and not necessarily to create tools for student success in mathematics education. Sadly, this has led to a model where the primary choice for adapting to (or initiating) curriculum change is to find a different commercial textbook. My editor once said that the text that is adopted is often everyone’s third choice.

Of course instructors can produce their own lecture notes, and have done so for years, but this remains an onerous task. The publishing industry arose from the need to provide authors with copy-editing, editorial, and marketing services, as well as extensive reviews of prospective customers to ascertain market trends and content updates. These are necessary skills and services that the industry continues to offer.

Authors of open educational resources (OER) including (but not limited to) textbooks and lecture notes, cannot afford this on their own. But they do have two great advantages: The cost to students is significantly lower, and open licenses return content control to instructors. Through editable file formats and open licenses, OER can be developed, maintained, reviewed, edited, and improved by a variety of contributors. Instructors can now respond to curriculum change by revising and reordering material to create content that meets the needs of their students. While editorial and quality control remain daunting tasks, great strides have been made in addressing the issues of accessibility, affordability and adaptability of the material.