Creative Commons, OERs and Beyond

Open Access and Open Educational Resources

Open Access

Open access (OA) to research means free "availability on the public internet, permitting any users to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of [research] articles, crawl them for indexing, pass them as data to software, or use them for any other lawful purpose, without financial, legal, or technical barriers other than those inseparable from gaining access to the internet itself.  The only constraint on reproduction and distribution and the only role for copyright in this domain should be to give authors control over the integrity of their work and the right to be properly acknowledged and cited." - as defined by the Budapest Open Access Initiative 

Important components:

  1. Authors keep their copyright
  2. Zero embargo period
  3. Share the research data with the article
  4. Add a Creative Commons License

Open Educational Resources

Open Educational Resources (OERs) refer to educational materials (teaching, learning, and research materials) in any format, shared with the legal permissions for all users to freely access, use, adapt, or share for no cost. 

OERs are characterized by the 5Rs:

  • Retain - the right to make, own, and control copies
  • Reuse - the content is able to be used in a variety of ways
  • Revise - make changes to the content
  • Remix - combine the original or revised content with other materials
  • Redistribute - share the original, revised, or remixed content

Information modified from creativecommons.org and materials from the Creative Commons Certificate Program.

A sampling of the many articles that have been published related to OA and OERs,

that are currently available through the Cairn University Library.

Links to OERs, OA materials and information about OERs and OA.