Open Educational Resources (OER) are a type of Open Access (OA) material. Both OER and OA are freely available to the end user. Open Access materials typically include pre- and post-prints of scholarly articles and other academic content, but they do not include permissions to make the content more broadly accessible. OER takes the concept of “open” one step further: In order to be considered OER, users must be able to retain, reuse, revise, remix, and redistribute the content, without having to ask the copyright owner for permission. This is usually done by selecting an open license, such as one of the Creative Commons licenses.
