Chemistry World has an article about how the best-selling organic chemistry textbook has become open access. The 10th edition of John McMurry's textbook, Organic Chemistry, will be available free-of-charge. It appears likely that it will be under one of the Creative Commons Attribution licenses.
John McMurry's Organic Chemistry has been one of the best selling chemistry textbooks since it was first printed in 1984. Under his agreement with Cengage Learning, the book's publisher, McMurry realised he could ask for the book's copyright to be returned to him 30 years after it was first printed. Without copyright of the first edition, the publisher is unable to produce any more new editions, McMurry notes.
[...] Now McMurry is writing the book's tenth edition, releasing it for free next summer on OpenStax, an educational technology nonprofit run out of Rice University, US. The book's ninth, 2015, edition is currently sold for around £70 in the UK and $80 in the US. The upcoming edition - and likely any future editions - will be freely available worldwide as digital download.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 12 2022, @03:26AM (1 child)
The prices quoted in tfa appear to be textbook rental prices? The book is 1200+ pages and my brief attempt to find a new copy of the hardback version for sale on line was unsuccessful, but hints pointed to something like US$300.
Instead I was shown rental offers for a range of different rental periods, all of which were hard to decipher, the adverts were meant to deceive.
It's great that the author has given his publisher the finger! At the same time, this may make it even more difficult for anyone that wants a real book to read and keep on their shelf.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday October 12 2022, @04:28AM
This is a common ploy for old but popular textbooks. Someone buys a few copies and marks it up a lot.
Or you can just print the book. In addition to the usual stuff, there's already vanity presses out there. I bet you could get one to print a decent quality copy of this, soft or hard cover for a class.
(Score: 2) by Snotnose on Wednesday October 12 2022, @03:51AM (5 children)
difficulty: I only took first semester chem in college. I was a math major, my weeder course was differential equations, which we called diffy Qs. I did fine in that class.
My understanding is the reason organic chem is a weeder is you have to memorize a bunch of stuff. I can't memorize shit. I sucked at history. Ask me who discovered Hawaii? Um, Magellan? No wait, it was Cook. Maybe Cortez. Oh wait, Cortez was too busy fucking over the Mexicans to discover Hawaii.
When did $Who discover Hawaii? Um, 1492? I'm pretty sure they killed the dude though.
Contrast to math. Take advanced algebra, chapter x builds on chapters x-1. Take trig, builds on chapters x-1. Calculus, you get the picture. By the time you get to diffy Qs you either understand the concepts or you don't. Very little memorization beyond a few things like the law of cosines.
Is this the way organic chemistry should be taught? Fuck if I know, I'm a retired math major and there is no way you're drawing me into that argument.
I just passed a drug test. My dealer has some explaining to do.
(Score: 4, Touché) by maxwell demon on Wednesday October 12 2022, @04:28AM (2 children)
Some unknown ancestor of the indigenous people of Hawaii?
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 12 2022, @08:22AM
Ancient aliens posing as Hawaiian Gods.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 13 2022, @02:09PM
OP means a white person with money and influence who can draw a place on the world map and show it around to their friends who are just as wealthy and white
(Score: 3, Informative) by captain normal on Wednesday October 12 2022, @04:31AM
TFA says, "Now McMurry is writing the book’s tenth edition, releasing it for free next summer on OpenStax". You'll have to wait till then.
OpenStx has an interesting selection of texts available now.
"It is easier to fool someone than it is to convince them that they have been fooled" Mark Twain
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 13 2022, @12:55AM
> The dishes in the sink are giving me dirty looks again.
Thanks for the big deja vu moment, takes me back to living in a co-op house of about 30 students. I forgot it was my night to do the dishes and wasn't reminded until I got home late...coming down from an acid trip (good stuff, windowpane). The big sink full of dishes and I had a splendid time, and they all decided to stay in one piece. A successful evening all around.
(Score: 5, Informative) by canopic jug on Wednesday October 12 2022, @05:38AM
It got trimmed from the submission, but the topic is also covered by Cornell University, Walled Culture, and OpenStax. The articles overlap heavily, which might be why they were not listed in the published summary. However, they also provide additional information. One other article was at Cornell University, McMurry makes bestselling chemistry text free in memory of son [cornell.edu], Walled Culture, Best-selling organic chemistry textbook to be freely available, supported by enlightened patronage [walledculture.org], and by OpenStax itself, OpenStax to publish new edition of best-selling organic chemistry textbook — and it will be free for all to use [openstax.org] (warning for javascript).
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There were some earlier SN discussions which I considered relevant:
Money is not free speech. Elections should not be auctions.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by PinkyGigglebrain on Wednesday October 12 2022, @05:54AM (3 children)
"Cengage Learning announces new Organic chemistry standard textbook by $somebody-no-one-has-heard-off-who-signed-over-their-copyrights that will become the new required standard textbook at all Universities in countries that have enforceable copyright laws"
"Beware those who would deny you Knowledge, For in their hearts they dream themselves your Master."
(Score: 2) by RamiK on Wednesday October 12 2022, @10:13AM (2 children)
From what I hear, there's indeed a push to reorganize and rebuild the chemistry curriculum (organic obviously but even physical to some extent) around click chemistry reactions since they offer an equivalent theoretical foundation but with more real world industrial and biological applications.
compiling...
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Wednesday October 12 2022, @01:59PM (1 child)
Does that mean that the free-to-download textbook is already obsolete>
(Score: 2) by RamiK on Wednesday October 12 2022, @03:10PM
Nah. It will be decades before anything gets done. The only undergrad program that changes that fast is CS and even there these things can drag on for years like how long it took to remove all the digital design nuanced materials from the programs even after VHDL and Verilog made it all obsolete.
compiling...