Our belief

We believe education is a universal public good. Everyday we aim to provide learners and educators with wide open access to high-quality, accurate educational materials and resources.

One way we do this is to learn out loud on the openstax.org blog! Our audience is a large community of education leaders, K12 teachers, higher education instructors, open education advocates, policy-makers, and like-minded organizations. Our readers notice trends, appreciate open educational resources (OER), and tirelessly advocate on behalf of students and educators.

Our publishing approach

Aligned with our mission to improve educational access and learning for everyone, our focus is on sharing ideas and thoughts about contemporary issues in K-16+ education and open education advocacy.

We recognize there’s more important work happening than we are able to write about - so we invite contributions and insights from the field that would benefit our audience by providing fresh ways of thinking and sparking innovative ideas. In addition to thought leadership, we also highlight important work being done by our official Technology Partners. Our partners produce high-value, low-cost products and services aligned to OpenStax content designed to supplement and complement instruction.

If you’re interested in sharing your story or perspective, please read the guidelines below.

Blog Components

Some basic guidelines to keep in mind:

• Keep articles between 600-1000 words
• Please consider using real-life, non-stock photography to provide depth to your story - and ensure you have permission and the legal right to use any image. Attribution is required.
• Review your writing prior to submission for grammar, sentence structure, and text edits
• Use a casual, non-academic, conversational style of writing, prioritizing inclusive, asset-framing language
• Provide links to relevant and high-quality resources within the body of the text
• Provide a short author bio and any user handles to tag on social media
• Disclose if you are receiving perks or compensation for organizations that you’re writing about or that are related to the subject that you’re describing. We steer clear of conflicts of interest or subtle bias. The name of the game is to be upfront with our readers about anything that might have a significant influence on your opinions (the FCC actually requires this by law).
• OpenStax is a non-partisan organization and will not publish political topics, however we welcome civil discourse surrounding proposed and active policy involving open education resources (OER). Policy yes; politics no.

We reserve the right to condense and edit any submission to ensure adherence to our voice, style, and format. Promotional links in submissions will be removed. This being said, we also aim to be fair and cooperative and will not fundamentally shift the meaning of any portions of guest-authored pieces without your permission. Final drafts will be shared with the author prior to publication on the website for approval.

Terms and disclosures

OpenStax reserves the right to refuse to publish any works submitted for review for any reason, which it is not obligated to disclose to the guest author. Reasons for rejecting a guest article can include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Inaccurate or misleading information or facts
• Excessive grammatical or spelling errors
• Irrelevance to the blog, its existing content, theme and focus
• Product push, marketing speak, or sales pitches
• Fundraising for self-benefit
• Not enough fresh perspective or information

OpenStax may remove any published works by a guest author from openstax.org without prior warning or explanation to the author. All original content submitted will remain the intellectual property of the author. By submitting a guest-authored article for review, you are agreeing to the terms outlined in this policy. For questions regarding guest authoring or guest articles on OpenStax, please contact the Creative Services team at communications@openstax.org. OpenStax reserves the right to change this Guest Posting Policy at any time. Occasionally, OpenStax offers compensation to advisors or users when the products are used in growth and development purposes. We do not compensate for guest blogs submitted by outside authors.

OpenStax does not accept solicitations for student-directed educational content in the form of guest articles or blog content. The OpenStax blog is a place for inspiration and ideation, not direct teaching of students or requesting future titles. We are a grant-funded organization, and so are only able to pursue the development of materials for which we have acquired funding.