Front and Back Matter
When authoring a resource, especially one that follows a traditional textbook format, it’s important to think about what front and back matter you want to include.
Front matter is the material that goes at the beginning of the book before its main content. Common types of front matter in books include a title page and copyright notice, acknowledgements, a dedication, or an introduction, preface, foreword, or prologue. Similarly, back matter is the material at the end of your book, displayed after the main content of the book is finished. Common types of back matter in books include conclusions, appendices, bibliographies, glossaries, contributor lists, sources, suggested reading, epilogues, afterwords, and author’s notes. You can include as much (or as little) front and back matter in your book as you like, and some types may be more or less appropriate for your individual project.
For all projects, however, we strongly recommend that you include, at minimum, an acknowledgement section and a copyright section in your front matter, and a sources section in your back matter. These three components make it easy to communicate your resource’s license clearly to your users and to clearly attribute material that was pulled from existing resources. To make it easy, the library has created templates for these components, which you can copy and paste and revise for your individual project needs.
Acknowledgement Example
This Open Educational Resource textbook has been adapted from:
Pressbooks User Guide by Pressbooks, licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
- Chapters 1, 2, and 3
Affordable Course Content Awards Authors Guide by VCU Libraries, licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
- Chapters 4, 5, and 6
Author’s Note:
Thank you to all the contributors who made this book possible!
Lead Author And Editor:
Rodney Ram, Virginia Commonwealth University
Contributing Authors:
John Doe, A Great University
Jane Doe, Other Great University
Cover Information:
Exterior_Daytime by VCU Libraries, licensed under CC-BY-NC.
Publication of this book was made possible by the Virginia Commonwealth University Affordable Course Content Awards grant program. Published by VCU Libraries Publishing, Richmond, VA.
Copyright Statement Example
© 2024, Rodney Ram
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
You are free to:
Share—copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format
Adapt—remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercially.
The licensor cannot revoke these freedoms as long as you follow the license terms.
Under the following terms:
Attribution—You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use.
No additional restrictions—You may not apply legal terms or technological measures that legally restrict others from doing anything the license permits.
Publication of this book was made possible by the Virginia Commonwealth University Affordable Course Content Awards grant program.
Published by Virginia Commonwealth University Publishing, Richmond, VA.
Key Takeaways
- Front matter refers to text that goes at the beginning of the book before its main content such as introductions, foreword, and prologues.
- Back matter on the other hand refers to the content at the end of the book after the main content of the text such as glossaries, bibliographies, and appendices.
Adapted from Pressbooks User Guide by Pressbooks, licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
