Open Access

Here is a 9-minute video explaining what open access is about. 





The Budapest statement defined open access as follows:


There are many degrees and kinds of wider and easier access to this literature. By 'open access' to this literature, we mean its free availability on the public internet, permitting any users to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of these articles, crawl them for indexing, pass them as data to software, or use them for any other lawful purpose, without financial, legal, or technical barriers other than those inseparable from gaining access to the internet itself. The only constraint on reproduction and distribution, and the only role for copyright in this domain, should be to give authors control over the integrity of their work and the right to be properly acknowledged and cited.

Source: "Read the Budapest Open Access Initiative". Budapest Open Access Initiative. Retrieved 23 October 2013. For further reading, please click here.


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Some readings about open access:

• Berlin declaration on Open Access to Scientific Knowledge
• Policy guidelines for the development and promotion of Open Access to Scientific Information and research

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Below are a list of Open Access Repositories for journals:

• Directory of Open Access Journal (DOAJ) – is an online directory that indexes and provides access to quality open access, peer-reviewed journals.
• Directory of Open Access Repositories (OpenDOAR) – is an authoritative directory of academic open access repositories.
• InTech – World’s largest multidisciplinary open access publisher of books covering the fields of Physical Sciences, Engineering and Technology, Life Sciences, Health Sciences, Social Sciences and Humanities.
• Registry of Open Access Repositories (ROAR) – promote the development of open access by providing timely information about the growth and status of repositories throughout the world.
• Open Access Repository Publications of Fellows of the Indian Academy of Sciences – This website attempts to collect, preserve and disseminate the intellectual output of the Academy available as publications by its Fellows in peer-reviewed journals.

Open access journals for Science

• BioMed Central – publishes 277 open access journals which between them cover all areas of biology and medicine.
• Royal Society Open Science – publishes original research across the entire range of science on the basis of objective peer review.
• GigaScience – An online open-access open-data journal, publishes 'big-data' studies from the entire spectrum of life and biomedical sciences. 
• PeerJ – publishes the world's scientific knowledge through open access licensing. Published more than 800 peer-reviewed articles and 1000 preprints.
• F1000Research – an Open Science publishing platform for life scientists, offering immediate publication and transparent refereeing, avoiding editorial bias and ensuring the inclusion of all source data.
• Life – an international, peer-reviewed open access journal of scientific studies related to fundamental themes in Life Sciences, especially those concerned with the origins of life and evolution of biosystems, and is published quarterly online by MDPI.
• BMJ Open Respiratory Research – an online-only, peer-reviewed Open Access respiratory and critical care medicine journal, published by BMJ in partnership with the British Thoracic Society. The journal is dedicated to publishing high quality, peer-reviewed, medical research in all disciplines and therapeutic areas of respiratory and critical care medicine.
• eLife – is a peer-reviewed open-access scientific journal for the biomedical and life sciences.

Open Courseware

OpenCourseWare is the name given to open educational resources that are presented in course format, often including course planning materials, such as syllabus and course calendars, along with thematic content, such as textbooks, lectures, presentations, notes and simulations. (cc by OCW)

In Open Courseware Consortium (OCWC), there are free and open digital publication of high quality educational materials, organized as courses. A collaboration of more than 200 higher education institutions and associated organizations from around the world creating a board and deep body of open educational content using a shared model. 

Some Asian countries' open courseware are listed below.

China Open Courseware 

国家精品课程 http://www.jingpinke.com/

Netease 网易公开课 http://open.163.com/ – This website is linked to the following universities, click at the each university to view the open course offered.

• Zhejiangilin University 吉林大学
• Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics 北京航空航天大学
• Fudan University 复旦大学
• Jnmin University of China 中国人民大学
• Nankai University 南开大学
• Northeastern University 东北大学
• Peking University 北京大学
• Re University 浙江大学
• Shandong University 山东大学
• Wuhan University 武汉大学
• Shanghai Jiaotong University 上海交通大学

Hong Kong Open Courseware 

Open University of Hong Kong 香港公开大学 http://freecourseware.ouhk.edu.hk/fc/php/index2011.php

Taiwan Open Courseware 

Chung Hua University 中華大學 http://ocw.chu.edu.tw/

Fu Jen University 輔仁大學 http://ocw.fju.edu.tw/

Hung Kuang University 弘光科技大學 http://podcast.hk.edu.tw/

KaoHsiung Medical University 高雄醫學大學 http://wm.kmu.edu.tw/learn/custom/course/public_list.php

National Central University 國立中央大學 https://sites.google.com/site/ncuocw/

National Cheng Kung University 國立成功大學 http://140.116.203.51/site2/newocwcourse/course_OCW1.php

National Chiao Tung University 國立交通大學 http://ocw.nctu.edu.tw/

National Chiao Tung University 國立交通大學 http://ocw.nctu.edu.tw/

National Chung Hsing University 國立中興大學 http://140.120.2.227/nchu_oc/OCW/

National Dong Hwa University 國立東華大學http://opencourse.ndhu.edu.tw/moodle/

National Hsinchu University of Education 國立新竹教育大學 http://ocw.nhcue.edu.tw/

National Ilan University 國立宜蘭大學 http://ocw.niu.edu.tw/moodle/

National Open University 國立空中大學 http://ocw.nou.edu.tw/moodle/

National Sun Yat-sen University 國立中山大學 http://ocw.nsysu.edu.tw/bin/home.php

National Taiwan Normal University 國立臺灣師範大學 http://ocw.lib.ntnu.edu.tw/

National Taiwan Ocean University 國立臺灣海洋大學 http://moodle.ntou.edu.tw/course/index.php; http://podcast.ntou.edu.tw/podcast/channels_by_category/20

National Taiwan University of Science and Technology 國立臺灣科技大學 http://ocw.ntust.edu.tw/

National Taiwan University 國立臺灣大學 http://ocw.aca.ntu.edu.tw/ntu-ocw/index.php

National Tsing Hua University 國立清華大學 http://ocw.nthu.edu.tw/

Providence University 靜宜大學 http://igtplus.lib.pu.edu.tw/

Soochow University 東吳大學 http://elearning.nttlrc.scu.edu.tw/portal/learn/course/curriculum.php

Southern Taiwan University of Science and Technology 南台科技大學 http://ocw.stust.edu.tw/

Taipei Medical University 臺北醫學大學 http://www.xms.tmu.edu.tw/home/index.php

Taiwan Open Courseware Consortium 台灣開放式課程聯盟 http://www.tocwc.org.tw/

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Japan Open Courseware 

Osaka University OCW 大阪大学 http://ocw.osaka-u.ac.jp/front-page?set_language=en

Kyoto University OCW 京都大学 http://ocw.kyoto-u.ac.jp/en

OCW University of Tokyo 东京大学 http://ocw.u-tokyo.ac.jp/

Waseda University OCW 早稲田大学 http://www.waseda.jp/ocw/index_e.html

Kyushu University OCW 九州大学 http://ocw.kyushu-u.ac.jp/english/index.html

Nagoya University OCW 名大の授業 http://ocw.nagoya-u.jp/index.php?lang=en&mode=g&id=&page_type=top

Hokkaido University OCW  北海道大学 http://ocw.hokudai.ac.jp/index.php?lang=en&page=home

Japan OCW Liaison Committee
Tokyo Institute of Technology 東京工業大学 http://www.ocw.titech.ac.jp/

Indonesia Open Courseware

Universitas Indonesia (UI)

University of Sumatera Utara (USU)

Open Textbooks and E-books

Open Textbooks

• Bartleby – the preeminent Internet publisher of literature reference and verse providing students, researchers and the intellectually curious with unlimited access to books and information on the web, free of charge.

• Boundless – has 21 college level subjects textbook

• CK-12 Flexbooks – contains of K-12 open textbooks and variety kind of learning objects, also includes teaching resources.

• College Open Textbooks – lists open textbooks by subject, many of which have been peer reviewed.

• Connexions – more than tens of thousands of learning objects called pages, that are organized into thousands of textbook-style books in a host of disciplines, all easily accessible online and downloadable to almost any device, anywhere, anytime.

• Flat World Knowledge – is the largest publisher of open college textbooks for students worldwide.

• Open Library – one web page for every book. Open Library is an open project: the software is open, the data are open, the documentation is open which had gathered over 20 million records to date.

• Open Textbook Library – hosted by the University of Minnesota, this site contains open textbooks covering Business, Management and Marketing, Accounting and Finance, Computer Science and Information System, Economics, General Education, Humanities and Languages, Law, Mathematics and Statistics, Natural and Physical, Social Sciences.

• Open Textbook Project – a collection of 40 existing open textbooks curated by BCcampus and available for reuse and adaptation.

• OpenStax CNX Library – offers modules (small knowledge chunks) or collections (structured into books or course notes) covering Art, Business, Humanities, Mathematics and Statistics, Science and Technology and Social Sciences.

• Orange Grove Text – program works with Florida Virtual Campus and the University Press of Florida to curate and publish open textbooks.

• Textbook Revolution – is a student-run site dedicated to increasing the use of free educational materials by teachers and professors. We want to get these materials into classrooms. On this site you'll find links and reviews of textbooks and select educational resources. Some of the books are PDF files, others are viewable online as e-books, or some are simply web sites containing course or multimedia content.

• The Saylor Foundation – a free and open collection of college-level courses.
• LATIn – 23 open textbooks available in Latin America.

E-books

• E-Books on the Web – University at Buffalo Libraries website provide a single search from multiple sources for open textbook.

• Free Book Centre – contains links to thousands of free online technical books. Which Include core computer science, networking, programming languages, Systems Programming books, Linux books and many more.

• Librivox – Free public domain audiobooks.

• Project Gutenberg – offers over 45,000 free ebooks: choose among free epub books, free kindle books, download them or read them online.

• The Internet Archive – A non-profit, is building a digital library of Internet sites and other cultural artifacts in digital form. Like a paper library, we provide free access to researchers, historians, scholars, the print disabled, and the general public.

Blogs related to OER news

1. Jorum blog
2. Open Librarian
3. http://acreelman.blogspot.com/
4. http://mooc.ntu.edu.tw/blog/ by National Taiwan University
5. http://onestoplearning.blogspot.com/ by Dr. A. A. Karim
6. http://learnos.wordpress.com/ by Viplav Baxi

MOOC courses schedule

Click at the link of any institutions below to view the up-to-date courses offer.

1. OERu
2. OpenupEd
3. EUROPA (MOOCs), EUROPA (Courses)
4. 学堂在线 (xuetangX, China) - 清华大学MOOCs
5. OOPS - Opensource Opencourseware Prototype System (OOPS) 
6. EdX
7. Coursera
8. Udacity
9. P2PU
10. CourseSites MOOC Catalog
11. 果壳网MOOC学院 (China)

This is the documentary done by China CCTV about Introduction to MOOC for the Chinese.

《新闻调查》 20140531 慕课来了！

http://www.mooc-list.com/ “MOOC List” is an aggregator (directory) of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) from different providers. 
“MOOC List” don’t give MOOCs or build MOOCs. “MOOC List” list the majority of MOOC courses around the world! 

“MOOC List” is a website where you can search for MOOCs from different initiatives.

Practice and review

1. Concept Guide on Reusable Learning Objects with Application to Soil, Water and Environmental Sciences, S. Grunwald and K.R. Reddy (2007)
2. The Open Educational Practices Landscape (2010)
3. Fair Use Challenges in Academic and Research Libraries (2010)
4. Background and action paper on OER, Paul G. West and Lorraine Victor (2011)
5. Beyond OER, Shifting Focus to  Open Educational Practices, OPAL report (2011)
6. 5 things you should know about the OER university Plan (2011)
7. A report on the Re-use and Adaptation of OER, Ishan Sudeera Abeywardena (2012)
8. Report on the Assessment and Accreditation of Learners using OER, D. Conrad, W. Mackintosh et al. (2013)

Quality assurance

1. Quality consideration, Ishan Sudeera Abeywardena
2. Guide to Quality in Post-Traditional Online Higher Education Guide, Sir John Daniel and Stamenka Uvalic-Trumbic 

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Policy and development

International OER policy: milestones

• Budapest Open Access Initiative (2002)
• UNESCO Forum on Open Courseware (2002)
• UNESCO International Institute for Educational Planning (IIEP) & Global OER Community (2005)
• Cape Town Open Education Declaration (2007)
• Dakar Declaration on OER (2009)
• Commonwealth of Learning/UNESCO Guidelines on OER in HE (2011)
• 2012 OER Paris Declaration

Asia region

• Chinese Quality Open Course Project (2011)
• Indonesia Higher Education Law

Some readings about OER policy and practices:

1. Policy Guidelines for the Development and promotion of Open Access to Scientific Information and Research (2011)
2. Policy Recommendations for open educational practice (2012)
3. A Grand Tour of OER Policy (2014) by Robert Farrow

POERUP is an organisation carrying out research to understand how governments can stimulate the uptake of OER by policy means. The result is a global inventory of over 300 relevant national and other large-scale OER initiatives and 11 country reports and 5 mini-reports.

Copyright and licensing

Resources related to copyright and licensing:

1. OER Copyright and Licensing Toolkit
2. OER and Open Licenses: The Dual-Pub Solution, Ahrash N Bissell (2011)

Institutions and organisations

List of institutions and organisations which involved actively in OER movements.

1. College Open Textbooks
2. Commonwealth of Learning (COL)
3. Community College Consortium for OER (CCCOER)
4. Connexions (CNX)
5. Creative Commons
6. Creative Commons Taiwan
7. OERAsia
8. OERCommons
9. OER China
10. Open Education Database (OEDb)
11. Open Education Europa
12. Open Educational Quality Initiative (OPAL)
13. OERu
14. Open Textbooks for Hong Kong
15. OpenupEd - MOOCs
16. The International Council for Open and Distance Education (ICDE)
17. Vietnam OER

Universities involving:

1. AKO Aotearoa, New Zealand
2. Athabasca University, Canada
3. BCcampus, Canada
4. Charles Sturt University(CSU), Australia
5. Contact North | Contact Nord, Canada
6. Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar Open University (BAOU), India
7. eCampusAlberta, Canada
8. Excelsior College, US
9. Glasgow Caledonian University (GCU), UK
10. Institute of Technology Sligo, Ireland
11. Korean National Open University (KNOU), Korea 
12. Kwantlen Polytechnic University (KPU), Canada
13. Lincoln University, New Zealand
14. National Taiwan University, Taiwan
15. Nelson Marlborough Institute of  Technology (NMIT), New Zealand
16. NorthTec, New Zealand
17. North-West University, South Africa
18. Open Polytechnic, New Zealand
19. Open Universiteit, Netherlands
20. Otago Polytechnic, New Zealand
21. Portage College, Canada
22. Sripatum University, Thailand
23. Southern New Hamsphire University (SNHU), Manchester 
24. SNDT Women’s University, India
25. SUNY Empire State College (ESC), US
26. Swinburne University of Technology, Australia
27. Tianjin Open University, China
28. The Open University of Hong Kong (OUHK), China
29. The University of Nottingham, UK
30. Thomas Edison State College, US
31. Thompson Rivers University (TRU), Canada
32. Tsinghua University（清华大学）, China
33. Unitec Institute of Technology, New Zealand
34. Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC), Spain
35. University of Leeds, UK
36. University of the South Pacific (USP), Fiji
37. University of South Africa (UNISA), South Africa
38. University of South Wales, UK
39. University of Southern Queensland (USQ), Australia
40. University of Tasmania (UTAS), Australia
41. University of Wollongong (UOW), Australia
42. Waikato Institute of Technology (Wintec), New Zealand

About us

OER Asia - Open Educational Resource Community in Asia

OER Asia is an Asian Forum to share information, views and opinion, research studies and knowledge resources in addition to guidelines and toolkits on good practices on and about Open Education Resources in the Asian Region.  The creation of this site was inspired by a research project sponsored by the International Development and Research Centre of Canada [www.idrc.org ] as part of a study on Openness and Quality in Asian Distance Education, that had its genesis in "PANdora, a PAN Asia Networking Distance and Open Resource Access" involving collaborative studies on Open Distance Education  in Bhutan, Cambodia, China, Indonesia, Laos, Mongolia, Pakistan, the Philippines, Sri Lanka, Thailand, and Vietnam.

About OER Asia

From East to West Asia is a huge continent home to some four billion people, a vast majority of whom are young seeking education in its Schools numbering millions and a further 50 or 60 thousand institutions of higher learning. The number of Asian Children attending school is about 550 million and those in higher education exceed 75 million; in addition to these some 10 million  are also enrolled in some 70 universities of open learning. Their search and hunger for knowledge is unprecedented anywhere else in the world. This site hopes to bring an Asian perspective to the ever growing interest in sharing knowledge and enhancing collaboration amongst Asian educators and policy makers to the benefits as well as challenges around Open education Resources [OER]. OER Asia recognizes the diversity that is Asia but at the same time we are amazed at the desire of its people to overcome difficulties of diversity in collaborating and co operating in the development of education resources for a common purpose and good.

The Wawasan Open University [www.wou.edu.my] is the youngest among Asia’s 70 open universities  engaged in open distance education. As a new university it wishes to take advantage by leapfrogging three or four generations of distance teaching practice by using all of the technological assets available to it,  in this early part of the 21st century. The University is sponsored by a not-for-profit charity and is probably the first of its kind in Malaysia, a country populated by hundreds of for-profit private Higher Education Institutions.

The Institute of Research and Innovation [IRI] of the university is committed to exploring innovations in teaching and learning especially in the new technology enabled and enriched environment. The IRI was launched in mid 2010 and is presently mobilizing funds to support it’s mission as well as develop a network of Asian researchers studying OER and OCW development on the continent.

About WOU

The Wawasan Open University [ www.wou.edu.my ] is the youngest among Asia’s 70 universities  engaged in open distance education. As a new university it wishes to take advantage by leapfrogging three or four generations of distance teaching practice by using all of the technological assets available to it,  in this early part of the 21st century. The University is sponsored by a not-for-profit charity and is probably the first of its kind in Malaysia, a country populated by hundreds of for-profit private Higher Education Institutions.

About IRI

The Institute of Research and Innovation [IRI] of the university is committed to exploring innovations in teaching and learning especially in the new technology enabled and enriched environment. The IRI was launched in mid 2010 and presently mobilizing funds to support it’s mission as well as develop a network of Asian researchers studying OER and OCW development in the continent.

Conferences and symposium

A list of conferences

2014
icofe2014 - January 16-17, Hong Kong
MOOCS4D - April 10-11, Philadelphia, USA
Open Textbook Summit 2014 - April 16-17, B.C.
OER14 - April 28-29, Newcastle
魔課師×酷斯拉研討會（MOOCs × Coursera Seminar）- June 3, Taiwan
2nd Regional Symposium on OER - June 24 - 27, Penang, Malaysia
EADTU - October 23-24, Krakow, Poland
28th Annual Conference AAOU - October 28-30, Hong Kong
OpenEd14 - November 19-21, Washington, DC

Web Conference:
OER in Asia: Key Issues of Sharing and Searching - February 25, Hong Kong Watch reply here.

2013
27th Annual Conference AAOU - October 1-3, Pakistan
EADTU - October 23-24, Paris
OpenEd13 - November 6-8, Park City, Utah. Watch reply here.
ASEM LLL Research Network 1 Meeting - December 19-20, Bangkok, Thailand
Open Data Workshop 2013 - November 8-9, Taiwan

2012
E-learning and Open Educational Resources - April 18, Hong Kong

Policy Forum for Asia and the Pacific: Open Education Resources - April 23-24, Bangkok. Read here for details.

OER repository

OER

FLOSS Manuals – free manuals for free software

Free Technology Academy – offers an online master level programme with course modules about Free Technologies.

JISC content – This website provides an introduction to digital collections designed for education. They are mainly aimed at university students, researchers and librarians but many of the online archives are open to anyone. The collections cover areas such as history, social sciences, or science and engineering and include, for example, journals, newspapers and images.

Jorum – This is a JISC funded Service for UK Further and Higher Education, to collect and share Open Educational Resources (OER), allowing their reuse and re-purposing.

Khan Academy – provides free education through a library of videos covering K-12 math, science topics such as biology, chemistry, and physics, and even reaches into the humanities with playlists on finance and history.

KNOU OER – An OER collection of Korea National Open University, mostly in Korean language.

Merlot – Categories supported are Academic Support Services, Arts, Business, Education, Humanities, Mathematics and Statistics, Science and Technology, Social Sciences and Workforce Development. It is a program of the California State University providing free and open resource designed primarily for higher education.
Opensource Opencourseware Prototype System (OOPS) MyOOPS開放式課程 –  This website contains open source open courseware and OERs translated into Chinese by thousand of volunteers. The courses translated are from MIT Open Courseware, John Hopkins Bloomerg School of Public Health (JHSPH), Utah State University (USU), Phase Transformations and Complex Properties Research Group Database of Dr. Harry Bhadeshia, Professor, University of Cambridge and Royal Society Fellow, Japan OCW Alliance- including Keio University, Kyoto University, Tokyo Institute of Technology, the University of Tokyo and Waseda University, OpenCourseware of Tufts University, MIT WORLD — Over 300 speeches from MITs video archives.

NanoHub.org - created by the NSF-funded Network for Computational Nanotechnology, provides over 1600 open teaching and learning resources: online presentations; course material; learning modules; podcasts; simulation tools.

OER Commons – Worldwide learning network of shared teaching and learning materials. Subject areas including: Arts, Business, Humanities, Mathematics and Statistics, Science and Technology, Social Sciences. Support materials for primary, secondary and post-secondary.

Open Education Europa – The gateway to European OER.

SOL*R – some B.C.-based projects and resources funded by BCcampus.


Swinburne Commons – Swinburne Commons draws together quality learning objects and media from across the University. Contributed items can be easily re-used within the University, or optionally made open access to highlight the research strengths, teaching excellence and unique aspects of Swinburne.


Thailand Cyber University Project – There are more than 600 self-paced learning courses free of charge provided in Thai Language.

The Open Learning Initiative – offers two ways to use our course materials. Open and Free courses are designed for individual learners and academic versions are designed to be used by classes led by an instructor.

University of Leeds’ Open Window – Collaboration with Jorum providing resources on Engineering, Sciences, Languages, Teaching and Learning, Health and Medicine, Media and Communications, Arts and Architecture.

Vietnam Open Educational Resources (VOER) – more than 20 thousand modules can be found in Vietnamese and English.

Xpert – contains metadata and resources for almost 150,000 learning objects from over 8000 providers.
National Repository of Open Educational Resources (India) – Initiated by the Department of School Education and Literacy, Ministry of Human Resource Development, Government of India and the Central Institute of Educational Technology, National Council of Educational Research and Training, the Repository belongs to all of us. Anyone can participate in, contribute, curate and organise resources and activities, growing it to reach every teacher and every student in all languages.

Digital media

BurningWell – This is a repository for public domain (free for any use) images. You are free to download, copy and use the photos you find here for any purpose. These free images were donated by photographers from around the world.

Every Stock Photo – is a search engine for free photos. These come from many sources and are license-specific.

Flickr The Commons – shared hidden treasures from the world’s public photography archives.

Free Images – a high quality resource of digital stock photographic images for use by all. All images in the collection are free to use on websites, printed materials and for illustration and design use.

FreeFoto.com – the largest collections of free photographs on the Internet.

Freerange Stock – This website provides quality stock photos for commercial and non-commercial use. For free.

JISC MediaHub – brings together resources from wide range of collections. Some of these are licensed for educational use by JISC Collections, some are made available by other providers.

Karen's Whimsy Public Domain Images – Contains hundreds of beautiful images gleaned from her collection of old books, magazines, and postcards. They are all from material printed prior to 1923 and are in the public domain.

Photo Pin – Search millions of creative commons photos from Flickr.

Pixabay – A repository for stunning public domain pictures. Your source for free vectors, free drawings and free photos.

Public-domain-photos – All photos on this web site are public domain.

Wellcome Images – All images in the website are available free for use in low resolution with terms and conditions.

Wikimedia Commons – A database of 20 thousand freely useable media files to which anyone can contribute.