About Lecture Minutes

Preserving Pedagogical Legacy: A Vision for Academic Publishing of Lecture Materials

The act of teaching is not merely the transmission of knowledge but the careful, creative preparation of intellectual engagement. Yet, in the transition to digital-first educational environments, instructors' contributions are increasingly subsumed into institutional platforms, stripped of authorship, and repackaged without consent. Universities, driven by administrative efficiency and monetization imperatives, often claim ownership over recorded lectures and shared materials, effectively erasing the educator's creative and intellectual labor.

We believe in empowering educators to formally publish their teaching content in open-access serials with DOI assignment. This practice recognizes lectures as scholarly artifacts, worthy of preservation, citation, and dissemination.

Teaching as Intellectual Production
Lecture preparation involves deep synthesis, critical framing, and pedagogical design. Whether through crafting engaging narratives, responding to student needs, or translating complex ideas into accessible formats, instructors generate a rich layer of intellectual labor that is often unacknowledged by traditional academic publishing metrics. By publishing lecture materials, educators formalize and archive this work, giving it scholarly legitimacy.

Intellectual Property in the Digital Academy
Universities increasingly claim broad rights over content delivered via their learning management systems. This not only risks educators losing control over their materials but also raises ethical concerns about consent, authorship, and attribution. A DOI- and ISSN-based publishing framework allows instructors to assert legal and scholarly ownership of their lecture content, providing both protection and recognition in academic contexts.

Preserving Tacit Knowledge and Pedagogical Insights
Much of the value in teaching lies in its nuance: the offhand example that sparks understanding, the story that contextualizes theory, the questions that provoke deeper inquiry. These pedagogical elements are rarely captured in standard textbooks. Formal publication of lecture materials ensures that such insights are preserved, accessible, and built upon by future educators and scholars.

Expanding the Audience for Teaching
Traditional classroom delivery limits access to those enrolled in specific institutions. By contrast, open-access publication of lectures democratizes education, reaching learners across socioeconomic and geographic barriers. It also fosters cross-disciplinary engagement, inviting researchers, students, and the public to benefit from curated, pedagogically refined knowledge.

Implications for Professional Development and Impact
Publishing lecture content with a DOI and ISSN allows educators to list these works in CVs, tenure dossiers, and grant applications. It affirms teaching as a site of scholarship and amplifies its impact metrics through downloads, citations, and reuse. Moreover, it aligns with open science and public scholarship movements advocating transparency and access.

A Call to Educators
Instructors are the lifeblood of academic institutions, yet their intellectual contributions to teaching are often ephemeral and institutionally marginalized. By reclaiming authorship through formal publication, educators can preserve their pedagogical legacy, protect their intellectual property, and expand the reach and impact of their work. We call upon lecturers and instructors to embrace this model, and upon academic institutions to support it, recognizing the publication of lecture content as a vital and scholarly act.