Students in developing countries are to get free textbooks written using "wiki" technology that lets anyone add to or edit an online document.

"The usual business model for textbooks just doesn't work for these countries," says Rick Watson, an expert on the development of opensource software at the University of Georgia, US. "Why not get groups of academics and their students to write them?"

Publishers typically halve their prices for the developing world, he explains, but a single book can still cost one-fifth of average yearly income in places like Uganda.

Watson has recruited about 80 academics from the US and other countries to his Global Textbook project. It will produce free online textbooks using technology similar to that behind online reference work Wikipedia.

Anyone can edit or add to the texts that will gradually take shape on the project's website, Watson explains. It currently relies on donations of time and money from the academic and business worlds, but in the long term will seek corporate sponsorship.

Keep it spontaneous

As well as being freely available to view online they can be downloaded for printing. "We don't want to have to tie these into web access, which can be difficult," Watson says. A downloadable version could be used to print cheap copies locally for physical distribution. Starting in 2007, contributors from Peru, Egypt and China will translate textbooks into Spanish, Arabic and Chinese.

In planning the project, Watson and colleagues have had to tackle problems that have troubled Wikipedia (see Wikipedia tightens editorial rules after complaint. "We want them to be accessible and credible texts so only the academics will be able to make and approve changes," says Watson, "but we also want to keep the spontaneity of wikis".

Changes that have not been approved by an academic overseeing a book will appear in a different colour to inform readers the material is not as reliable as the rest of the text. Wiki-based books already exist online but do not have the editorial control measures to make them trusted enough for textbooks, Watson says.

Quick results

He first experimented with wiki textbooks because he could not find the right book for a course on the web programming language XML. "I made the course assignment [for my students] to be to write a chapter of the textbook," he says. "It turned out to be very high quality." The other academics plan to use the same model for future books.

Books are currently in progress on information management and business fundamentals. An advisory board with members from universities in South Africa, Columbia, Egypt, Malaysia, Uganda and the UK is discussing which subjects to cover next.

"We want to produce books that can have the most beneficial and quick results," says Watson. Agriculture or public health will probably be the first targets, he adds.

Accuracy concerns

"The internet is really the best conduit for this kind of educational information," says Francis Dogo, senior director of operations at The Development Gateway, a non-governmental organisation that uses web technologies to help projects in developing countries. "The wiki model allows very fast development of resources," he adds.

"The internet is developing faster in these places than people realise," he told New Scientist, "I was recently in Togo where rapidly growing numbers of people are using the web to investigate educational and other opportunities."

But Dogo adds that the need to maintain accuracy could cause other problems. "With textbooks you have to be very careful with accuracy," he says, "if this becomes popular and lots of people want to contribute it could become overwhelming for the editors," he warns.