For his bestseller's 10th edition, McMurry has decided to part ways with his longtime publisher, the industry giant Cengage, which has published the book since the beginning. He recently sold the rights to OpenStax, a nonprofit based at Rice University that is dedicated to developing open education resources (OER), learning and research materials created and licensed to be free for the user.
"My textbook is the best selling organic textbook in the world and has been for some time, but it's expensive. All textbooks are expensive," McMurry said. "I liked the notion of making my work free for anyone."
mcmurry organic chemistry book free download
McMurry is a prolific chemistry textbook author with 43 other titles under his belt, but Organic Chemistry is his most widely read. It's been a bestseller in the field for almost as long as it's been in print; McMurry even claims that it's the most popular organic chemistry textbook in the world. He has some ground to stand on: it's the only English-language resource used in India, Australia, Japan and Korea, and it's been translated into a litany of languages including German, Czech, Portuguese and Greek.
"This is the first time a current bestseller is going to be openly licensed and free to hundreds of thousands of students who take organic chemistry in a given year," said OpenStax editor-in-chief David Harris. "It's a seminal moment for OER."
OpenStax, the foremost publisher of OER materials, saw its own user base grow by 183 percent from March 2020 to December of the same year, serving over 1 million more students in the 2020-2021 academic year than during the previous year. Harris estimates that in its first year on OpenStax's platform, over 50,000 students and other users will download the book.
"This is probably one of our most frequently requested titles, both because the subject matter is enormously difficult and because organic chemistry is, if not the most, maybe the second or third most expensive course," he said. "If you think about a community college student struggling and looking at a $300 to $500 course expense, this is going to make a huge difference in their lives."
It's a fitting tribute, he added, in part because organic chemistry is a required course for the vast majority of students who hope to become doctors -- in other words, those who might one day treat cystic fibrosis, or even find a cure. McMurry said he wanted to expand access to course materials so more students could pursue that goal, regardless of their ability to pay for expensive textbooks.
Peter was in and out of New York-Presbyterian Hospital so often, McMurry said, that he formed a relationship with some of the doctors who also happened to teach pre-med courses at Columbia University. He was invited to speak in front of a class one year -- an organic chemistry class, in fact -- to talk about his experience as a patient of cystic fibrosis. He was such a hit that he was invited back for 10 more years in a row.
McMurry said Peter would tell the same joke to each class, which went like this: "My dad writes organic chemistry textbooks, so I just want to thank you all for buying them -- even though you're required to."
"If I can take the most popular organic book and publish it for free, then there will be no competition, and even more people will read the book," McMurry said. "And I like the thought that everyone who reads it will see Peter."
OpenStax has published 57 free, openly licensed titles in its library and is set to increase that total to 67 by 2024. More than 6 million students use OpenStax resources each year, which has saved them more than $1 billion since 2012. This will be the 16th textbook Cengage has made available in its online learning platforms as an OpenStax Ally, part of a commitment to providing a variety of affordable course materials to students.
Organic Chemistry by John McMurry is a leading content provider that covers the requirement for students engagingly doing chemistry majors. It adds the basic concepts and new developments in analytical instruments. The ninth edition includes precise modifications inside each chapter. The scope of NMR spectroscopy discussions and the possibility of exploring mechanism challenges has greatly increased. The interpretation of mass spectra and NMR spectra are involved. The latest breakthroughs in the medical, pharmaceutical, and biotechnology fields or organic chemistry's biological application are the subject of the discussions.As a result of user feedback, the text material in the ninth edition has been revised for greater accuracy. It also includes new sections like why this chapter, worked example, an overview of chapters, visualizing chemistry problems, new mechanism problems section, practice your scientific analysis and reasoning feature, something extra, keywords, summaries of concepts and mechanism. 2ff7e9595c
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