Adding Contributors
You can work collaboratively in Pressbooks by assigning contributor roles from the book Dashboard. There are five roles for contributors, ranging from “subscriber”, with read-only permissions, to “administrator”, who have the right to edit all book content. An “author” can create their own content in the book, but can’t modify other contributors’ content or the book’s settings.
Roles in Pressbooks
| Role | Manage Users & Settings | Add or Edit Chapters | Publish Chapters | Delete Chapters | Read Private Chapters | Comment (if enabled) |
| Administrator | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Editor | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Author | No | Only their own | Only their own | Only their own | Only if setting is enabled | Yes |
| Collaborator | No | Only their own | No | No | Only if setting is enabled | Yes |
| Subscriber | No | No | No | No | Only if setting is enabled | Yes |
If you have co-authors, you can add them as contributors to a particular book. Once you have a book, you can add them from the Dashboard menu under “Users” – “Add New”
If your contributor already has a Pressbooks account on the eCampusOntario network, you can add them as an “existing user” with their institutional email. If not, you can add a new user to Pressbooks by creating a new account “Add New User”, which requires the assignment of an identifier (username) and their institutional email. The new user will receive an invitation to activate their account by logging in. This option also applies when you want to add contributors from other post-secondary institutions in Ontario that have their own instance of Pressbooks, such as York University or Toronto Metropolitan University (TMU).
If you’re working with contributors outside Ontario’s post-secondary sector (other sector or out-of-province), new accounts must be requested directly from eCampusOntario. You can have an unlimited number of contributors in each book, but you can’t all edit the book’s content at the same time. Save often and be careful not to override if a user is currently in the book.
