Open Access (OA) content is freely available online and published under open copyright and licensing. While the most flexible Creative Commons license -- CC-BY -- is recommended, any of the CC licenses may be applied to open access works. OA content means more publishing control for faculty, more savings for colleges and in turn, students, and more access for everyone, with fewer articles stuck behind paywalls and passwords.
Open Educational Resources are educational materials that are made freely available to others to use, copy, share, and build upon. OER encompasses everything from open textbooks and text banks to lab assignments and class activities. OER can save faculty time, save students money, and can foster open pedagogy, allowing everyone to share, revise, and collaborate.
OA and OER are slightly different in terms of licensing options, but they can work together to foster more open practices across teaching and scholarly research.
OER vs. Open Access Licenses is adapted from Open Licensing and Open Education Licensing Policy by Cable Green, https://doi.org/10.5334/bbc.c, licensed under CC BY 4.0. OER vs. Open Access Licenses is licensed under CC BY 4.0 by Maggie Swanger.
Although the work of academic research and scholarly publishing is largely conducted by public dollars, the results are not shared freely and openly with the public. Colleges and universities can essentially end up paying in multiple ways for access to the work that they and the government funded.
Grants, often taxpayer-funded, support research.
Researchers, often at public universities, conduct research.
Results are submitted to publishers and peer-reviewed by other researchers for free.
Authors transfer copyright to the publisher for free. (In fact, they often pay a fee for publication.)
College libraries pay for access to scholarly articles.
Instead of the for-profit model that limits access to research and discoveries, publishing articles freely in open access journals ensures that everyone can access research and that authors can set their own terms. Founded in 2000, PLOS (Public Library of Science) is an example of a nonprofit open access scholarly publisher.
Open Access and OER is licensed under CC BY 4.0 by Maggie Swanger.
