Why not contribute to the open textbook project
From Pharmpedia
There are a lot of good reasons to contribute to an open textbook, as outlined in Why contribute to the open textbook project. Sometimes, maybe, there are also reasons not to contribute.
These might be:
Contents |
Legal reasons
If you are not in the position to provide material under the Pharmpedia:Copyrights license, you can't contribute.
Legal problems can come from areas where you wouldn't expect them. E.g. in some countries like Germany an employer has the legal right to all inventions done by an employee - even if done in the employee's spare time, and outside of the field of expertise for which the employee has been hired. This right prevents publication of ideas without an explicit agreement from the employer. Such things are often not mentioned in work contracts, because it is the law.
There is also an ugly trend in some countries and professions to let employees sign some code of conduct or code of ethics. Having to adhere to some ethics in business is not a bad idea, but these codes often sneak in some restrictions of what (if anything at all) an employee is allowed to publish without an explicit (written) agreement from the company (e.g. the company's legal and PR departments).
Financial Reasons
If you want to make money from writing and then selling a book, Wikibooks is probably not the way to go.
Vanity
If you don't want to lose control of your work, if you want your name to be associated with a book "forever," don't contribute.
Me-Too Books
Does the world really need the 1001st introduction to some topic? If the web, usenet archives and other documentation projects are already full of free information about a topic, is there really a need to have yet another document? Maybe the time would be better spent to support an existing project, or start (and finish :-)) something truly original?
Trivial Books
Is your effort really well spent on some trivial piece of "book"? In the extreme case, if the yellow press (or what amounts to the equivalent publication in a certain area) has already covered the topic extensively for years (and they even got it right), is there really a need for such a book? Wouldn't your effort be better spent on some less trivial task?
Lack of Perseverance
Does your perseverance not last longer than setting up a "wish list" of chapters? Are you not in a position to regularly spend time to ensure some coherence in a book, and is there no reasonable expectation that you will find other contributors? Then maybe your time is better spent contributing small parts to an existing book than rushing out to set up the structure for THE ultimate book about some subject, and then abandoning the book.
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