College students could save an average of $128 a course if traditional textbooks were replaced with free or low-cost “open-source” electronic versions, a new report finds.

Textbook costs are particularly burdensome for students at two-year community colleges; the cost, more than $1,300, is about 40 percent of the average cost of tuition, according to the College Board.

Jennifer Swain, 21, a student at South Florida State College, said her instructor for a physics class used an open-source textbook (College Physics, from OpenStax). She likes that she can download it onto an app on her iPad that allows her to highlight sections of text, just as she could in a traditional textbook — but this one is free, whereas a comparable hard copy physics text would cost about $250. A classmate, Ashley Edmonson, 24, said it’s convenient to access the textbook from any device, so she doesn’t have to lug around another tome: “They’re really hard to carry,” she said.

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