The “O” in Core Economics website: open-access
The Economy, explains clearly in this helpful blog why The Core Economics website Project has a bigger goal than the creation of a textbook. He writes:
“Far more important than the content innovations in the book are the process innovations… It is released under a creative commons license, so that any user can customise, translate, or improve it for their own use or the use of their students. Most importantly, we see this initial product not as a stand-alone text, but rather as the foundation on which an entire curriculum can be built.”
Both ebook and the non-interactive PDFs are covered by a CC licence known snappily as Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International. It is designed to help you to “customise and improve”, while respecting our obligations to contributors. Here’s how it works:
Attribution
NonCommercial
recently pointed out that “the nominal price of textbooks has risen more than fifteenfold since 1970, three times the rate of inflation”. We offer The Economy as a free download. No one should charge you for access to this ebook, or any other Core Economics website Project material. Let us know if this happens!
NoDerivatives
We don’t want the last part of this CC licence to discourage anyone from using our material creatively. We hope to create the larger curriculum that Rajiv describes and so we will be flexible whenever we can, because we cannot do it alone. For example, we know that our course would be more valuable if students had access to localised versions and foreign-language translations. If anyone wants to contribute (for example, several of you have already offered to translate) we would be pleased to hear from you.
