Open Educational Resources (OER)

What are OERs?

SPARC (the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition) defines Open Educational Resources (OERs) as teaching, learning and research resources released under an open license that permits their free use and repurposing by others. OERs can be textbooks, full courses, lesson plans, videos, tests, software, or any other tool, material, or technique that supports access to knowledge. 

Open educational resources (OER) are any resources available at little or no cost that can be used for teaching, learning, or research. The term can include textbooks, course readings, and other learning content; simulations, games, and other applications; syllabi, quizzes, and assessment tools; and virtually any other educational material. Open resources are issued under a license that spells out how they can be used: Some may only be used in their original form; in other cases, resources can be modified, remixed, and redistributed. OER expand the access to educational resources to more learners, more of the time, and they have the potential to spur pedagogical innovation, introducing new alternatives for effective teaching.

Use the following resources to see if a specific article is available in an open access version. 

• CORE

  Pulls research papers from 11K data providers from around the world via a browser extension or through OAI (Open Access Initiative) identifier.

• Digital Commons Network

  Curated by university librarians and their supporting institutions, the Network includes a growing collection of peer-reviewed journal articles, book chapters, dissertations, working papers, conference proceedings, and other original scholarly work.

• Google Scholar

  Google Scholar searches for articles, books, and other scholarly content from many publishers, and attempts to provide links to the full text. Great for known item searches but offers limited ability to refine/limit your search.

• Unpaywall: Simple Query Tool

  Use this tool to check a few articles to see if they are Open Access. DOI required.

• Unpaywall Browser Extension

  Works with the Chrome browser to see if there is a free version of an article available.

Below is a short video explaining the reasoning behind using OER in your classroom and the links to resources discussed.

MIT Libraries OER Resource Guide https://libguides.mit.edu/oer
CORE https://core.ac.uk/
Digital Commons Network http://network.bepress.com/

Parts of this guide are a re-mixed and customized version of a libguide from MIT Libraries. All original content is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.