Authorship

Determine Author Order

As with many other parts of creating or remixing OER as a team, determining the order of authorship for your OER requires a team conversation. There are a number of things to consider before designating creators. Factors you may consider when determining authorship include:

• Should the team lead be first or last author?
• Who wrote the most original content?
• Who needs first authorship for their reappointment, promotion, and tenure dossier?
• Is an alphabetical listing of your last names most appropriate?
• Are there any other considerations particular to your team, department, university, or discipline?

Once you establish your sequencing of authors, you will want to affix it to your Pressbook using the steps below. It is important to note that it is easy to edit

Set Your Author Profile

Many of us publish under formal names, and you will want to make certain your names display your desired name, especially because Pressbooks defaults to the username if first and last names are not entered into the user profile. Each author must edit their own profile.

Select Users from the menu on the left of your Pressbooks Dashboard [1]. Select the Profile sub-menu [2]. On your profile page, locate the Name section and enter your First Name and Last name as you wish it to appear on the Pressbook [3]. Then, select the drop-down menu next to Display name publicly to select the variation of your name [4]. Finally, scroll to the bottom of the page and select Update Profile to save your changes. For further guidance on how to manage your Pressbooks profile, see the Pressbooks User Guide.

Adding Authors in Pressbooks

Once you have determined the order of authorship for your OER as a team, you will need to place that in your OER Pressbook. You will place it in the metadata of your OER.

Step 1: Select authors

Select Book Info from the menu on the left of your Pressbooks Dashboard [1]. Scroll down to find the Author(s) section [2]. From the drop-down menu, select the user you want to add as an author [3]. Note: If the author is not listed in the drop-down menu, you will need to add them as a User first. Then, select Add to add them as an author [4]. Repeat steps 3 and 4 to add all users who will be listed as authors.

Step 2: Order authors

Now that your authors have been added, you can order them by selecting one author and using the Move Up or Move Down buttons [1]. You can also remove authors by selecting Remove [1]. Once you have the authors in the order determined by your team, select Save [2].

When your OER Pressbook is viewed, the names of the authors will appear in the order chosen.

Chapter Metadata

If a chapter is an original creation or you are adding unmodified adopted content, you can easily add author names to the chapter metadata. The process is essentially the same as adding OER authors.

Scroll to the bottom of your chapter page. Underneath the chapter editing box and revisions log is the chapter metadata.

From the Chapter Author(s) drop-down menu, select the user you want to add as an author. Then, select Add to add them as an author [1]. Repeat this two-part step to add all users who will be listed as authors. Next, you can order authors by selecting one author and using the Move Up or Move Down buttons [2]. You can also remove authors by selecting Remove [2]. Once you have the authors in order, select Save on the page’s right-side Status & Visibility menu.

Attribution Statement

Much like you would if remixing an entire OER, if you have remixed an existing OER chapter or portion, then you should properly attribute the original authors and sources. Currently, Pressbooks does not offer an option for including this in chapter-level metadata. We suggest placing the attribution statement in a standard textbox at the end of the chapter (see below). For additional guidance on writing an attribution statement, see our remixing and attribution guidance.