OER Collective Transition FAQs

The OER Collective has fulfilled its original purpose of building institutional capability for OER in Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand. On 31 December 2025, the OER Collective was retired.
OER support is provided by CAUL only to Membership institutions that currently have 2025-26 grant supported projects.
To support Membership institutions to transition from the Collective to their own OER publishing programs, the CAUL Procurement team has negotiated a Pressbooks agreement for Members as part of its annual procurement cycle. In addition, CAUL has negotiated a shared Pressbooks Platform offer with CAVAL which CAUL Members can explore as another option to continue publishing OER via Pressbooks.

CAUL-negotiated individual Pressbooks Agreement:
This option is for institutions that want their own individual Pressbooks subscription at a discounted CAUL-negotiated rate. Institutions choose a tier based on the number of books they plan to publish. Pressbooks hosts and manages a dedicated single-institution network on Australian infrastructure (or Canadian, at a reduced price), including maintenance, updates, and daily backups.

Key benefits include greater institutional control, an institution-branded OER catalogue, and included add-ons such as Single Sign On (SSO), LMS integration (LTI), and Pressbooks Results for assessment reporting. Institutions also receive direct access to Pressbooks Premium support.

Find full details of the agreement via ConsortiaManager (tinyurl.com/CMPB2026). Note, the agreement is accessible via log in to ConsortiaManager key contacts at each institution.

CAVAL shared Pressbooks platform agreement:
This option provides a shared, cost-effective OER publishing platform using self-hosted Pressbooks software managed by CAVAL. Instead of paying per book or tier, institutions pay a flat annual fee, shared equally across participants, plus a one-time implementation fee. Costs reduce as more institutions join.

The platform features a shared catalogue, and while not all Pressbooks add-ons are available, CAVAL provides localised support, assistance with Pressbooks shells and metadata, and plans to establish a Pressbooks User Group. CAVAL also hosts and manages all technical aspects of the platform.

Full details of the agreement were emailed to OER Collective key contacts and library staff on Friday 12 December.

 In summary:

• Choose the CAUL individual agreement for maximum control, a dedicated catalogue, and full add-ons.
• Choose the CAVAL shared platform for a lower-cost, collaborative approach with shared infrastructure and support.

Published books that are moved across to the CAVAL platform will remain static unless the institution takes up the CAVAL offer and moves across as well. I.e. It will be a static copy (clone) of the book. Institutions are still most welcome to also copy or clone OER content to their alternative platform of choice to work on a live version of their book elsewhere.

Institutions can use the new ‘archive’ feature for books that move across to the CAVAL platform to clearly specify that that instance of the OER will no longer receive updates.

The purpose of copying all the publishing books across to the CAVAL platform is to retain a unified collection of Australasian OER as much as possible.

Projects funded by a 2025-26 OER Collective grant will be supported in 2026 by a new OER Grant Projects Officer role (0.2 FTE/1 day per week). In 2026:

• Pressbooks access for grant projects will be provided via CAUL
• Grant institutions will be charged a levy, as usual, to fund OER Grant Project Officer role
  Details have been emailed to the Key Contacts of each institution involved in a grant.

Note: This does not include OER projects funded by grants in previous years.

Several options are available in 2026 to institutions with in-progress OER.

• All works in progress and already published can be edited and made published via the CAUL OER Catalogue until the end of Q1 2026 (31 March 2026).
• A Pressbooks agreement negotiated by CAUL Procurement is available for institutions to sign onto if they would like to subscribe to their own instance of Pressbooks. Find details of the agreement in ConsortiaManager: tinyurl.com/CMPB2026. (Note, the agreement is accessible via log in to nominated Content Coordinators at each institution.)
• In addition, CAUL has negotiated with CAVAL as an alternative service provider to host the CAUL OER Catalogue and to provide institutions with an option to publish new content via a new shared Pressbooks platform service agreement. To support institutions with clear information as early as possible, CAUL provided further details via email to institutional contacts after the 12 December OER Collective Celebration.

Yes. The CAUL OER Catalogue will remain active in 2026. All URLs will remain intact until the Catalogue can be transitioned to CAVAL as the alternative service provider. Ample notice will be given to institutions ahead of this transition to support institutions with clear information as early as possible.

The CAUL OER Catalogue will remain active in 2026. All URLs will remain intact until the Catalogue can be transitioned to CAVAL as the alternative service provider. Ample notice will be given to institutions ahead of this transition.

The OER Collective Publishing Workflow Guide will remain available and hosted via CAUL Libguides. The guide has undergone a major update in 2025 and will not be updated from 2026. The OER Collective Administration Guide will be retired, with any relevant information in the guide transferred across to the Publishing Workflow. All OER Collective resources have a Creative Commons licence and CAUL encourages the reuse and adaptation of these materials.

This program was converted into an OER for asynchronous self-paced learning. CAUL encourages the use, sharing and adaptation of this resource: https://oercollective.caul.edu.au/caul-open-educational-resources-professional-development-program/

This program was converted into an OER for asynchronous self-paced learning. CAUL encourages the use, sharing and adaptation of this resource: https://oercollective.caul.edu.au/caul-open-educational-resources-professional-development-program/

The OER Collective Community of Practice and its Teams group was officially retired on 31 December 2025. Collective participants are encouraged to join the ASCILITE Australasian Open Educational Practice Special Interest Group (OEP SIG), an established, zero-cost, community of practice supporting open education practitioners across Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand. Find more information via the OEP SIG website: https://oepoz.wordpress.com

Support for Open in general is embedded in new CAUL strategy. CAUL will continue to advocate at a national level for Open practices and has committed funds in 2026 to support the transition of the OER Catalogue to an alternative service provider.

Institutions interested in exploring the Pressbooks agreement negotiated by CAUL Procurement can find the details in ConsortiaManager: tinyurl.com/CMPB2026. (Note, the agreement is accessible via log in to key contacts at each institution.)

Yes, network managers should direct all queries in 2026 to Pressbooks technical support.

Yes, they are the same features and inclusions, the consortium agreement provides Pressbooks Enterprise Networks for institutions and they will be built on the same infrastructure as all Pressbooks institutional networks.

Yes, there would be no loss of any functionality or features. The institution would need to terminate their existing Agreement (30 days notice before renewal) and they would need to accept the agreement negotiated by CAUL Procurement.

Institutions were requested to indicate their decision by 1 December 2025. Please contact oercollective@caul.edu.au if there are any concerns with meeting this deadline.

Pressbooks will work with each institution to determine the best process of migrating books. Depending on the number of books and the content included in the books, there are several options and the easiest in most cases will be to clone those books to the institution’s own Pressbooks catalogue once it is set up.

No new shells can be created in 2026. Existing shells can be edited and published up until 31 March 2026.

OER can be edited and published via the CAUL OER Catalogue until 31 March 2026. Please submit via the 2026 Request to Publish form.

Yes. There are many OER publishing platforms institutions can explore. The Rebus Community has a useful annotated list of commonly used OER publishing platforms in their book “OER Starter Kit for Program Managers”.
In addition, Pressbooks OER can be exported in multiple file formats then imported into other systems.

OER that are in-progress can be published to the CAUL OER Catalogue up until 31 March 2026. To do this, institutional key contacts submit the usual Request to Publish form. The new OER Grant Projects Officer will process the request and publish the OER.
Note: The OER Grant Projects Officer will not provide quality assurance review for any texts other than the 2025-26 grant-funded projects. All quality assurance steps, including copyright, accessibility and other checks, are to be undertaken by the author institution prior to submitting the Request to Publish.

Please see the Pressbooks Migration Cheat Sheet

Reach out to oersupport@caval.edu.au to confirm any other details and next steps.

Work with the Content Coordinator at your institution to organise next steps. Coordinate with Pressbooks to migrate your content to your new instances of Pressbooks.
Migration instructions and support is available via the Pressbooks Migration Cheat Sheet

Migrate your content to your instance of Pressbooks. Migration instructions are available via the Pressbooks Migration Cheat Sheet

Discuss options within your institution. This will assist you to make an informed decision about the future of OER support at your institution and into the future.