The Japan Open Textbook Publishing Consortium (日本オープン教科書出版コンソーシアム) is an initiative of teachers in Japan. We’re running a two-year pilot program from 2026 to 2028.
Open educational resources (OER) in Japan have typically been shared as static PDF files stored in institutional repositories, where they are difficult to search, update, and discover. Open Studio takes a different approach. Books published on the platform are web-native: every chapter has its own web address, making content fully searchable and discoverable by both search engines and AI systems. Teachers can embed video, audio, and interactive H5P activities such as quizzes and flashcards directly into their materials, with no programming knowledge required. Students access everything immediately, on any device, and readers who prefer offline formats can still download books as PDF or EPUB. The platform supports both Japanese and English texts.
The Consortium aims to:
- Provide a shared open access publishing platform where participating members in Japan can publish independently or work together on collaborative, cross-institutional projects.
- Create a new environment where teachers can explore various digital publishing formats and approaches, moving beyond static PDFs toward interactive, media-rich materials, and recognizing that members and member institutions are at different stages of their open access journey with different goals and needs.
- Build on the strength of our networks to encourage cross-institutional collaboration in creating, adopting, and adapting open access materials, and to facilitate knowledge sharing among educators.
The Consortium is about building community and capacity across participating members to support open education in Japan’s higher education sector, and seeing how the relevancy of interactive, up-to-date materials motivates students.