Skip to Main Content

Open Education

Open Access & Open Educational Resources Working Together

Open Access (OA) and Open Educational Resources (OER) are both part of a broader movement of making scholarly research, data, science, and educational materials open and free to use for all. However, there are some key distinctions between OA and OER.

Open Access & Open Educational Resources 101© 2022 by Stephanie Quail  is licensed under CC BY 4.0

Distinctions Between OA and OER

 

Similarities

  • Both OA and OER provide free public access.
  • Both aim to support education and scholarship by sharing knowledge
  • Both use Creative Commons Licensing
  • OER is a subset of OA. However, OER does not allow the ND licenses, while OA does.

Differences

  • OA focuses on research articles. OER focuses on teaching and learning.
  • OA articles or books use open licenses; however, the open license does not need to enable 5R permissions for users.
  • OA are online or downloadable documents.
  • OER can take a variety of formats such as a document, content in a course management systems, videos, software, and simulation.

"Unit 5: CC for Academic Librarians" by Creative Commons is licensed under CC BY 4.0

Chalmers Library Open Access Research Guide