OA/OER Explained
Open access (OA) refers to the free, peer-reviewed, online research either as journal articles or books, combined with the rights to use these outputs fully in the digital environment. OA content is open to all, with no access fees. Additionally, there are some Open Access resources that cannot be loaded into the catalog. You can click on these directly.
Open EducationalResources (OER) are free and publicly available teaching, learning, and research resources that reside in the public domain, or have been released under an intellectual property license that permits their free use and re-purposing by others (See Creative Commons). For example, instructors may download the material, tailor it to one’s course, save a copy locally to share with one’s students and share it back out with attribution. OER can include textbooks, course materials and full courses, modules, streaming videos, tests, software, and any other tools, materials, or techniques used to support access to knowledge.
OpenCourseWare (OCW) is a type of OER. OCW is a free and open digital publication of high quality college and university‐level educational materials. These materials are organized as courses, and often include course planning materials and evaluation tools as well as thematic content. These usually can be revised to fit your curricula.
