Differentiating Between Open Access and Open Educational Resources

Differentiating between open access and open educational resources can be a challenge in some contexts. Excellent resources such as "How Open Is It?: A Guide for Evaluating the Openness of Journals" (CC BY) https://sparcopen.org/our-work/howopenisit created by SPARC, PLOS, and OASPA greatly aid us in understanding the relative openness of journals. However, visual resources to conceptually differentiate open educational resources (OER) from resources disseminated using an open access approach do not currently exist. Until now.

This one page introductory guide differentiates OER and OA materials on the basis of purpose (teaching vs. research), method of access (analog and digital), and in terms of the relative freedoms offered by different levels of Creative Commons licenses, the most common open license. Many other open licenses, including open software licenses also exist.

Version 1.1 improves on 1.0 by:

• Rephrasing the statement about open data licensed as CC0.
• Indicating that scholarly books and articles may also quality as OER if released under a license which qualifies as OER.
• Noting the open access items can be printed.
• Correcting the bottom most chart by indicating that all OER are also open access, and open access items can also be licensed with the same licenses as items which are OER.
• In the bottom chart, addition of * to indicate that CC BY is the original open access license.
• In the bottom chart, additional of a box around closed or toll access
• Updating version number and date Please send errors and omissions to the author at arwalz@vt.edu Created in LucidChart.