OpenStax free textbooks

OpenStax is a non-profit educational initiative based at Rice University in the United States, which publishes complete university textbooks free for everyone. These are not summaries but real books of hundreds of pages, written by subject experts and reviewed by other experts before publication, and used by many universities around the world instead of expensive commercial textbooks. You can read them on the website directly, or download them as PDFs to study offline – a great advantage for students who need a thorough, free reference.

What you will find

• Books in the core sciences: biology, chemistry, physics, and anatomy and physiology.
• Books in mathematics: algebra, trigonometry, calculus and statistics.
• Books in other fields such as psychology, economics, business and computer science.
• In every chapter: learning objectives, worked examples, practice problems, a summary and key terms, and with many books, answers to some of the problems.
• Extra materials for teachers with some books, such as slides and question banks for those who register as instructors.

Who it suits

It suits first-year university students, especially in science, medicine, engineering and pharmacy, and advanced secondary-school students following international curricula or preparing for advanced exams. The books are in English; the language is academic but clear, and it is a good opportunity for students who will study their subject in English to get used to its terms early.

Teachers also use it to prepare lessons, examples and questions, and graduates use it as a free reference for revising the basics of a subject they studied before, ahead of postgraduate study or a professional exam.

How to use it, step by step

1. Find the book that matches your subject, and compare its contents with your syllabus to see which chapters you need.
2. Read the learning objectives at the start of the chapter, then read the chapter while solving the examples yourself.
3. Solve the end-of-chapter problems rather than just reading the answers.
4. Use the key-terms list at the end of each chapter to build a personal English–Arabic glossary.
5. Download a PDF copy of the book to study from at any time, even offline.

Before you start

Most OpenStax books are published under the Creative Commons licence CC BY 4.0, which means they may be used and shared with credit to the source; licence details can differ for some books, so check them on the book’s own page. A free textbook is an excellent reference, but it needs a regular study plan to pay off. The content and its rights belong to OpenStax and Rice University.