Technology

Begun in October 1999 as a Rice University “Secret Web Initiative,” Connexions has grown into one of the largest and most important open courseware resources in the world. Recent enhancements to Connexions have made it an attractive publishing platform for Rice University Press as well. After coding their manuscripts with the Microsoft Word template provided by Connexions (or by composing their manuscripts in LaTeX), our authors can upload their work to Connexions and see it converted instantly into Web pages. Connexions software also is able to automatically format its pages for printing in book form, which is effected through our partnership with Qoop, Inc., a full-service print broker that also manages all press sales, accounting, and author-royalty distribution.

Connexions is breaking new ground not only in technology, but also in the philosophy and ethics of publishing. Rice University Press authors who publish on Connexions must commit to making their works freely available in digital form, and to allowing their work to be reused by others under the terms of the Creative Commons License 2.0. This is the least restrictive of Creative Commons’ licenses; it asks only that those reusing our work give proper attribution to the original author. We at Rice University Press and Connexions believe that scholarly work should be disseminated as widely and as freely as possible, and should be made available for use without restriction by other scholars and creative artists. By publishing on the Connexions platform, the press and its authors share in Connexions’ commitment to providing valuable intellectual resources to the worldwide academic community.