LibGuides: Copyright Guide: Open Access (OA) and OER

Open Access (OA) and Open Educational Resources (OER)

Open access (OA)

OA refers to the free, immediate, online availability of research outputs such as journal articles or books, combined with the rights to use these outputs fully in the digital environment (Springer Nature, 2023).

Characteristics of OA: Free, Digital, Online.

Open Educational Resources (OER)

OER are learning, teaching and research materials in any format and medium that reside in the public domain or are under copyright that have been released under an open license, that permit no-cost access, re-use, re-purpose, adaptation and redistribution by others (UNESCO, n.d.).

OA VS. OER

The purpose of “open access” is to make information freely available to find and read. The author of an Open Access work retains copyright and determines how their resources can be used.

Open Educational Resources, take Open Access a step further. The ideal is to allow others to "retain, reuse, revise, remix, and redistribute" without needing to ask for permission, as long as the work is attributed to the copyright owner, giving credit where it is due. Therefore, OER is a subset of OA.

OER’s 5R: retain, reuse, revise, remix, redistribute (Wiley, 2014)

References:

Springer Nature. (2023). The fundamentals of open access and open research. https://www.springernature.com/gp/open-research/about/the-fundamentals-of-open-access-and-open-research

UNESCO. (n.d.). Open educational resources. https://www.unesco.org/en/open-educational-resources

Wiley, D. (2014, March 5). The access compromise and the 5th R. opencontent.org. https://opencontent.org/blog/archives/3221

OA and OER Resources

Open Access Journals

•Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ): DOAJ is an online directory that indexes and provides access to high quality, open access, peer-reviewed journals. 80 languages, 136 countries, about 13,500 journal without APCs, nearly 20,000 journals, and 9.5 millions article records.

•International Journal of Education and Arts: This journal primarily publishes peer-reviewed research-based field studies.

•Elsevier Open Access Journals: These open-access journals published by Elsevier are peer-reviewed and are permanently free for everyone to read and download

•Wiley Open Access Journals: Wiley Open Access publishes authoritative, peer-reviewed open-access journals across many research disciplines

•Canadian Research Knowledge Network Open Access Journals List: With the goal of improving the discoverability of gold open access journals, CRKN maintains a list of open access journals maintained by CRKN institution.

•arXiv.org: arXiv is a free distribution service and an open-access archive for diverse subjects, and Materials on this site are not peer-reviewed by arXiv.

Open Access eBook Collections

•Internet Archive: Over 20 million books and texts as well as archived webpages, audio recordings, live concerts, videos, images and software programs.

•eCampusOntario's Open Library: Funded by the Government of Ontario, this collection includes over 180 textbooks with Creative Commons licenses.

•B.C. Open Collection: The collection includes courses and textbooks, and new resources are being added all the time.

•Open Textbook Library: The University of Minnesota's Open Textbook Library provides access to over 220 open textbooks that have been peer-reviewed by faculty.

•OpenStax: This U.S. nonprofit is based at Rice University. The open textbook collection offers high quality peer-reviewed textbooks with Creative Commons licenses.

•OER Commons: OER Commons provides access to a vast collection of OER.

•Milne Open Textbooks: Milne Open Textbooks publishes high-quality, peer-reviewed textbooks for use in higher education.

•Open Textbook Store: A free collection of mathematics-related open textbooks.