Video from intheacademia. Remixed by The Learning Portal.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.

Look for a license, often  Creative Commons or  GNU, this will give the details on how content can be used, shared, and adapted as well as stating an requirements (such as attribution or non-commercial use). Some material may have instructor content that cannot be shared with students.

See our Databases page, those marked with a  are accessible to the public and many of them are open access or some of the content is. Please read individual descriptions and check with the site's Terms of Use.

Some open access scholarly publishers operate under questionable practices - for example with minimal or no peer review, charging fees after accepting papers, using editor's names without permission. [1]

If in doubt about the quality of a journal, check if it is a member of the  Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association or if it is listed in  Ebscohost: Serials Directory  or the  Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) 

For a list of things to look for when assessing journal quality - both positive and negative - see  Open Access Journal Quality Indicators at the Grand Valley State University.

1. Predatory open access publishing (2017). Retrieved from https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Predatory_open_access_publishing&oldid=760792711 )

What We Can Do

• Help faculty identify existing OER materials, including alternatives to textbooks
• Use advanced search skills to find exactly what faculty need
• Give options for ways that students can access resources
• Advise on how to make resources more accessible
• Advise on issues of copyright and fair dealing
• Advise on use of Creative Commons licences

What We (Likely) Cannot Do

• Be completely knowledgeable of your subject area
• Make the final call on the quality of a resource
• Choose your textbook or course material
• Interfere with your academic freedom

Attribution:

Text a derivative of “How Libraries can Help”, in  CCCOER: Faculty and Librarians Selecting High Quality OER, by Tina Ulrich, licensed under  CC BY 4.0.

The right to....

1. Retain: Make, own, and control copies of the content
2. Reuse: Use the content in a variety of different ways, i.e. in a class, in a video, or on a website, etc.
3. Revise: Adapt, adjust, modify, or alter the content itself, i.e. translate the content into another language
4. Remix: Combine the original content with other material to create something new, i.e. create a mashup
5. Redistribute: Share copies of the original content, and/or your revisions with others, i.e. give a copy of the content to a friend

*This material was created by David Wiley and published freely under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license at:  http://opencontent.org/blog/archives/3221