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Open Access

Open access is built on the idea of the unrestricted access and reuse of resources and information. Applied to education, it is commonly known as Open Educational Resources (OERs). "Open Access is the free, immediate, online availability of research articles coupled with the rights to use these articles fully in the digital environment. Open Access ensures that anyone can access and use these results — to turn ideas into industries and breakthroughs into better lives." — Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC)

10 Facts About Open Educational Resources

North Nord Online Learning, Government of Ontario

  1. OERs  are more than just free teaching, learning, and research materials
  2. OERs are available in most subject areas
  3. Many educational jurisdictions have formal OER initiatives
  4. Barriers to widespread OER adoption
  5. Most OERs are licensed under Creative Commons
  6. Open courseware is available from many universities worldwide
  7. Wikipedia is the largest single repository of open content
  8. Support needed for faculty on how to use OERs
  9. Higher education institutions have a role to play in OERs
  10. A wide variety of open access journals and articles are available to support teaching and learning

Why Open Access?

  • To improve education
  • To accelerate discovery
  • To further public enrichment

Open Access Explained

Open Educational Resources (OERs)

These are open access sites that offer additional resources and information on publishing and copyright.

Getting Started

  • American College of Clinical Pharmacy - Links to websites, professional organizations, resources, etc. 
  • American Medical Student Association - Free resources
  • Creative Commons
    • License resources including literature, video, images, audio, open education, scientific research, and more
    • It is affiliated with numerous content and knowledge sharing organizations, including Youtude, Wikipedia, Flickr, and MITCourseWear
  • edX - Free online course from major universities and colleges from around the world
  • Encyclopedia of Life - Information and pictures of all species known to science
  • Europeana Collections - 50+ million artworks, artifacts, books, videos, and sounds from across Europe
  • Free Music Archive (FMA) - An interactive library of high-quality, legal audio downloads
  • Internet Archive - Library of free books, movies, software, music, websites, etc.
  • MIT OPENCourseWare - Materials from over 2400 courses
  • Open Educational Resources
    • Curated library collections
    • Common Core hub
    • STEM literacy
  • Open Michigan - Free medical education resources
  • PLOS (Public Library of Science) - Focused on accelerating progress in science
  • School in the Cloud - Self-Organised Learning Environments using the Internet to freely collaborate and learn
  • SPARC (Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition) - Advocacy organization for open access to research and education and other resources
  • Wikimedia - Free media files
  • Wikipedia - Free encyclopedia

"Though research is produced as a public good, it isn’t available to the public who paid for it." (SPARC)

 

"Researchers benefit from having the widest possible audience." (SPARC)

 

FASTR Act will require that each taxpayer-funded manuscript be made available to the public online and without cost, no later than twelve months after the article has been published.

May 26, 2022