Open Access (OA) refers to freely available, digital, online information. Open access scholarly literature is free of charge and often carries less restrictive copyright and licensing barriers than traditionally published works, for both the users and the authors.
While OA is a newer form of scholarly publishing, many OA journals comply with well-established peer-review processes and maintain high publishing standards.
Open Educational Resources (OER) are educational materials that are in the public domain or that have been introduced with an open license. An open license means that anyone can use, copy and re-share the materials.
OER materials can be found in the form of full courses, course materials, textbooks, curricula, syllabi, lecture notes, tests, assignments, videos or audio (UNESCO).
What are the impacts of adopting OER? Check out this impact calculator from Lumen Learning to see how using OER materials can increase student success.
For more general information on OA and OER materials, see the following Research Guide (LibGuide):
