Open and Affordable Textbooks (OAT) Program (source: Rutgers Libraries website)

"Rutgers University Libraries are committed to supporting textbook affordability efforts, promoting the use of open educational resources (OER), and empowering faculty and teaching staff to innovate their teaching through the use of open, free, or library-licensed materials and teaching aids. In its first round in 2016-2017, this project brought an estimated savings of over $1.5 million to students at Rutgers University–Camden, Rutgers University–New Brunswick, Rutgers University–Newark, and Rutgers Biomedical and Health Sciences."

Rutgers University Libraries incentivizes faculty to adopt OERs by awarding funding to those who do one (or more) of the following:

• Adopt: Replace a traditional textbook with a free, low-cost, or open alternative
• Re-envision: Replace a traditional textbook with articles, book excerpts, audio, or video that are licensed through the Rutgers University Libraries, open access, or freely available online
• Create: Replace a traditional, high-cost textbook with one that they will design, author, and provide for free or at low cost to students

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The Open Education Initiative at UMass Amherst (source: UMass Amherst Library website)

"The Provost’s Office and the UMass Amherst Libraries launched the Open Education Initiative in the Spring of 2011. The Open Education Initiative is a faculty incentive program that encourages the use of existing openly-licensed, low-cost, or free information resources to support our students’ learning."

The goals of the Open Education Initiative at UMass Amherst are to:

• Encourage the development of alternatives to high-cost textbooks by supporting the adoption, adaptation, or creation of Open Educational Resources (OER) .
• Provide support to faculty to implement these approaches.
• Lower the cost of college for students in order to contribute to their retention, progression, and graduation.
• Encourage faculty to engage in new pedagogical models for classroom instruction.