This section begins by reviewing the initial stages of Rebus’ publishing process
This section begins by reviewing the initial stages of Rebus’ publishing process: the acquisition of users and editing of materials. After individuals approach Rebus with a particular project, the organization creates a project thread and summary on the forum. It recruits participants for each project by sending calls through the forum, email, and social media. Rebus has created sign-up spreadsheets, which detail the participants who have agreed to work on a particular project. Individuals agree to participate by filling in their name and contact information on the sheet, or by replying via the forum or email. The workflow hereafter can be significantly varied given each project’s specific needs and goals. Depending on the situation, Rebus may contact participants to confirm their specific role and the attendant deadlines. The editorial workflow is established with the project leads and editorial teams. All editing that follows occurs on Google Docs or other collaborative software.
Overall, the Rebus Community forum functions as a channel for acquiring Open Textbook projects. This section explores the original conception of the forum and follows with a discussion of current challenges and inefficacies in light of Rebus’ acquisitions and editorial goals.
2.1 The Forum and its Original Conception
The Rebus Community forum was conceived as a collaborative platform for fostering a global collegiate community of Open Textbook creators (Rebus 2016). It was conceived a public, web-based space to begin Rebus’ work of developing processes for publishing Open Textbooks, and as a framework model for a more robust project management software that would provide publishing tools and resolve relevant issues in the production process. The forum was designed as a space to encourage discussion, and bring communities together for developing Open Textbooks. Both the forum and the project management software were conceived as betas, to be tested by an audience composed of Open Textbook producers and adopters, that could be used to easily create and manage other kinds of OERs.
Once the forum’s goals had been laid out, the team chose Node BB for integration into the project management software once the latter was built. Node BB is an Open Source community forum software that is easily integrated into existing websites. Next, a clean design was incorporated into the basic Node BB forum, to create an intuitively navigable discussion board. Several basic categories were created, including those for Projects and General Discussion (See Figure 1). The forum was originally available to select users via an email link, however, within a few weeks, it was opened to all individuals around the world. At the time of the writing of this report, the forum has 409 users, and includes six main categories: New To The Rebus Community, Active Open Textbook Projects, Working Groups, Rebus Community and OTN Office Hours, Help and Tech Support, and General Discussion.
Currently, Rebus is us