Openness in Education

Open Access (OA)

Open access (OA) literature is digital, online, free of charge, and free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.

Open Access (OA) to research is defined by the Budapest Open Access Initiative as “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” while authors retain integrity and acknowledgment of work.

Important components of the OA model include:

• Authors keep their copyright.
• Zero embargo period.

• Share the research data with the article.
• Add a Creative Commons license to the research article that enables text and data mining.

Open Educational Resources (OER)

OER are education resources with legal permissions for the public to freely access, use, edit, and share to better serve all students.

“Open Educational Resources (OER) are teaching, learning, and research materials that are either (1) in the public domain or (2) licensed in a manner that provides everyone with free and perpetual permission to engage in the 5R activities”

The 5Rs are shorthand way of remembering the activities a license must permit for engagement in regard to an educational resource for that resource to be properly considered an Open Educational Resource (OER) [David Wiley]. If not public domain, these resources will be licensed under a Creative Commons license that permits the creation of derivative works – CC BY, CC BY-SA, CC BY-NC, or CC BY-NC-SA

the 5Rs include:

1. Retain – in regard to copies, make, own, and control (e.g., download, duplicate, and store)
2. Reuse – use the content in a wide range of ways (e.g., in a class, on a website, in a video)
3. Revise – adapt or modify the content itself (e.g., translate languages)
4. Remix – create something new via combining the original or revised content with other resources (e.g. mashup)
5. Redistribute – share copies of the original content, revisions, or remixes with others (e.g., post online)

OER comes in all shapes and sizes, from a single video to an entire degree program. OER are often collected together to resemble a traditional textbook to ease the transition process from copyrighted resources, and these are labelled ‘open textbooks’. Alternatively, OER can be aggregated and presented as digital courseware.

See examples of open textbooks: OpenStax,the Open Textbook Library or the BC Open Textbook Project.

See examples of digital courseware: Open Education Consortium and MIT OCW.

The Relationship Between OA and OER

Works with different licenses may fall under different terms: Cultural Works (FCW), Open Educational Resources (OER) and Open Access (OA).  

Paul West summarises the differences between the three categories as follows:

“Where a work is licensed with an ND restriction, it is called “Open Access” and not OER, just as when a work is licensed with an NC restriction, it may be called OER, but not FCW. If a resource is accessible and free of cost (other than the cost of the Internet connection), but does not fit the definitions of FCW or OER, it is called Open Access”

However, three categories overlap:

Free Cultural Works, Open Educational Resources and Open Access freedoms - Terms that overlap the licenses

'Educational Resources and Open Access freedoms - Terms that overlap the licenses' by Paul West, CC-BY 4.0. Adapted from: Creative Commons, Open Licensing & Open Education, by Cable Green, CC-BY

Free Cultural Works (FCW)	Open Educational Resources (OER)	Open Access (OA)
Public Domain marker	Public Domain marker	Public Domain marker
CC0 Public Domain dedication	CC0 Public Domain dedication	CC0 Public Domain dedication
CC-BY	CC-BY	CC-BY
-	CC-BY-NC	CC-BY-NC
-	CC-BY-NC-SA	CC-BY-NC-SA
-	-	CC-BY-ND
-	-	CC-BY-NC-ND
-	-	Selected copyrighted works

The Importance of Open Access for Faculty and Students

Open access is more efficient, equitable, affordable, and collaborative [cc book]. As journal prices continue to increase, they outpace library budgets, resulting in academic libraries often having to cancel subscriptions or shift money away from other budget items, ultimately limiting access to research.  

In addition, traditional publishers often require the transfer of exclusive rights when accepting works which can potentially result in institutions unable to access their own research. Open access provides for researchers to retain rights to articles, allowing for deposit of works in institutional repositories for long-term access and preservation. Whether submitting research to gold open access journals or green open access repositories, access is improved for faculty and students, and the public.

When authors publish under open licences, this further permits the reuse of the research, “thus has the potential to transform the literature into a much more powerful resource for research, education and innovation”. This is demonstrated in the Human Genome Project which has achieved $796bn of economic impact with enormous implications for health care, as reported by the Battelle Technology Partnership in 2011. “These are the kinds of economic and societal opportunities that become possible when barriers to exploiting the results of research are taken down”.

This type of open access system is better aligned with the original purpose of research, education and innovation, sharing results openly through the scholarly publishing process. “We need to look beyond open access's economic effect on existing barrier-based publishers and see the effect it will have on society as a whole”.

The Importance of Open Educational Resources for Faculty and Students

OER remove barriers. “At its core, OER is about making sure everyone has access. Not just rich people, not just people who can see or hear, not just people who can read English – everyone”. The OER model can generate more equitable economic opportunities and social benefits globally without sacrificing quality of education content. In fact, research shows that students save money when teachers adopt OER content and have equal or better outcomes.  

OER also provide opportunities for new ways of learning and continuous improvements in course design, as learners and educators engage with resources which enable open pedagogy and evidence-based practices.

“Openness in education means more than just access... [it] means designing content and practices that ensure everyone can actively participate and contribute to the sum of all human knowledge”.

“Openness in Education” by Natalie Hull is licensed under CreativeCommons Attribution 4.0 except where otherwise noted.