About The Textbook Project
Open-access academic textbooks, freely available
The Textbook Project is an open-access publishing platform for rigorous academic textbooks.
Its purpose is to make independent, peer-reviewed textbooks freely available to students, teachers, and researchers — without payment, subscription, or institutional gatekeeping.
Each textbook on the platform is published chapter by chapter as a living work. Chapters may be revised as fields develop, as clarity improves, and as readers offer corrections.
Translations are curated rather than mechanically reproduced. Each edition is reviewed for accuracy, conceptual fidelity, and natural expression in the target language.
The platform is designed for teaching, independent study, and wider public use. All materials are open access under the applicable licence for each textbook.
Published as it develops
The textbook is published chapter by chapter. New chapters will be added as they are completed, and existing chapters may be revised to reflect new developments, improve clarity, or incorporate feedback. Each chapter will indicate its publication date and current version.
Project principles
- Open access
- The textbook should be available without payment, subscription, or institutional access.
- Academic rigour
- The text should remain legally precise, theoretically informed, and attentive to historical and political context.
- Readability
- Complexity should not become obscurity. The book is written for students without reducing the discipline to simplified rules.
- Multilingualism
- International law should not be confined to a single language. Each edition should read naturally and accurately in its own linguistic setting.
- Revision
- The online format allows the textbook to be corrected, updated, and improved over time.
- Transparency
- Each chapter should identify its version, publication date, revision history, and applicable licence.