Open Educational Resources (OER)

Open Educational Resources (OER) are freely accessible, openly licensed teaching, learning, and research materials that reside in the public domain or have been released under an intellectual property license that permits their free use and repurposing by others. OER can include textbooks, course materials, full courses, modules, streaming videos, tests, software, and any other tools, materials, or techniques used to support access to knowledge.  As defined by Jennifer Campbell's "Creative Commons Certificate for academic librarians" course (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) these teaching, learning, and research materials are either (a) in the public domain or (b) licensed in a manner that provides everyone with free and perpetual permission to engage in the 5R activities (retain, reuse, revise, remix, redistribute).^[3]

Types of Open Access Licenses

The most common type of open access license is the Creative Commons (CC) license. It offers a flexible way to grant copyright permissions for creative and academic works. There are six main types of CC licenses, each with different levels of permissiveness: 

Creative Commons Licenses

• CC BY: Attribution - This is the most permissive license, allowing others to copy, distribute, and modify the work, even for commercial purposes, as long as they give appropriate credit.
• CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike - Similar to CC BY, but any derivative works must also be licensed under the same terms.
• CC BY-ND: Attribution-NoDerivatives - Allows others to distribute and copy the work, but not to modify or create derivative works. 
• CC BY-NC: Attribution-NonCommercial - Permits noncommercial use, distribution, and modification, but not for commercial purposes.
• CC BY-NC-SA: Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike - Combines the conditions of BY-NC and SA.
• CC BY-NC-ND: Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives - The most restrictive license, allowing only noncommercial distribution and copying, without modification. 

In his blog, Lumen Learning CAO David Wiley (https://davidwiley.org/- license https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) provides another popular definition, writing that only educational materials that satisfy the "5R's" meet the threshold of OER.

The 5Rs include:

1. Retain – permission to make, own, and control copies of the content (e.g., download, duplicate, store, and manage)
2. Reuse – permission to use the content in a wide range of ways (e.g., in a class, in a study group, on a website, in a video)
3. Revise – permission to adapt, adjust, modify, or alter the content itself (e.g., translate the content into another language)
4. Remix – permission to combine the original or revised content with other material to create something new (e.g., incorporate the content into a mashup)
5. Redistribute – permission to share copies of the original content, your revisions, or your remixes with others (e.g., give a copy of to a friend)

The easiest way to confirm that an education resource is an *open* educational resource that provides you with the 5R permissions is to determine that the resource is either in the public domain or has been licensed under a Creative Commons license that permits the creation of derivative (revised, remixed) works – CC BY, CC BY-SA, CC BY-NC, or CC BY-NC-SA.