Thousands of academic books covering areas of the sciences are available (legally) to be used at no cost. Many can be downloaded and saved and then printed, if desired. Others can be read online but not saved/downloaded.
More books are becoming freely available every month.
While use is free, there is a cost to creating or modifying and publishing these books. That cost is often supported by libraries, colleges and universities, and philanthropic organizations around the world.
These books can be used as textbooks for a course and/or used by students to enhance understanding.
Check this page periodically as these sites add new titles.
Featured sites:
*Directory of Open Access Books (a joint service of OAPEN, OpenEdition, CNRS and Aix-Marseille Université, provided by DOAB Foundation)
DOAB is a community-driven discovery service that indexes and provides access to scholarly, peer-reviewed open access books and helps users to find trusted open access book publishers. All DOAB services are free of charge and all data is freely available.
*OER Commons (About)
Science textbooks:
OpenStax is part of Rice University, which is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit charitable corporation. As an educational initiative, it’s our mission to improve educational access and learning for everyone.
Science textbooks:
Science (including Biology, Chemistry, and Physics)
Bookshelf provides free online access to books and documents in life science and healthcare (National Center for Biotechnology Information, U.S. National Library of Medicine)
The full text of thousands of books covering a wide range of the sciences (National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America).
Questions? Please let me know (engelk@grinnell.edu).
