CSUB professor helps launch open-access textbook

Free online book on exercise, sport psychology now available to students

By California State University, Bakersfield

February 14^th, 2022

Kinesiology majors at California State University, Bakersfield and beyond now have a new resource available to help them with their studies.

Dr. Zachary Zenko, assistant professor of kinesiology, has co-edited a new textbook called “Essentials of Exercise and Sport Psychology: An Open Access Textbook” that is now available online for free to students, educators and community members.

“We always want our students to have access to quality materials, but when there’s a significant cost associated, this is very stressful and can cause anxiety and financial distress,” he said. “Gathering open-access resources is essential for supporting our students and creating equitable access to education.”

The book was published in June 2021 by the Society for Transparency, Openness and Replication in Kinesiology and was edited by Dr. Zenko and Dr. Leighton Jones from Sheffield Hallam University in the United Kingdom.

More than 70 authors from around the world contributed to the textbook, which focuses on theories of physical activity and exercise behavior, music in sport performance, the positive effects of exercise for mental health and more.

“The open-access textbook that Dr. Zenko and colleagues have produced provides learning in a key content area in kinesiology and does so without furthering the financial burden. This is a win-win for our students,” said Dr. Brian Street, chair of the Kinesiology Department at CSUB.

The textbook comes after Dr. Zenko joined the society a few years ago and helped create an open-access journal called “Communications in Kinesiology.” After doing that, he was interested in working on an open-access textbook.

“Some fields and disciplines have readily available open-access materials that students can use, but that’s not the case with others,” he said. “In order for students to have access to a high-quality exercise and sport psychology textbook for free, it appeared necessary to create that ourselves.”

Dr. Zenko said he is happy with how the textbook turned out after a two-year process to put it together.

“I am proud of the work that all the contributors did and what Dr. Jones and I did as editors. I think we all learned a lot from the process,” he said. “It was a good collaboration experience among many people who had the common goal of making this type of resource more accessible to students.”

Dr. Zenko said he hopes the book will inspire other educators to put out their own open-access materials.

“I hope that scholars see this as proof of concept and that they do not have to rely on for-profit publishers as the sole method of creating and sharing their texts,” he said.