Open Access and Open Educational Resources
What is the difference?
Open Access (OA) describes scholarly literature that is digital, online, free of charge, and free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Open Educational Resources (OER), on the other hand, are teaching, learning, and research materials in any medium -- articles, lesson plans, course materials, audio/video recordings, etc. -- that reside in the public domain or have been released under an open license permitting no-cost access, use, adaptation, and redistribution by others. (Look for materials with the open Creative Commons licenses CC BY, CCY-SA, CCBY-NC, or CC BY-NC-SA.)
While OA and OER are created for different purposes, both OA and OER are vital for reducing or eliminating legal and financial barriers to education and the open exchange of ideas. Open Access articles can be part of the mix of resources used in OER.
