What’s “open” about OER? The 5Rs framework

What is the meaning of the term "Open" in "Open Educational Resources"?  

SPARC (the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition), an organization working to enable the open sharing of research and educational materials, uses the term "Open" to describe "any copyrightable work that is licensed in a way that provides users with free and perpetual permission to engage in the 5R activities":

Retain. The right to make, own, and control copies of the content (e.g., download, duplicate, store, and manage)

Reuse. The right 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) in its unaltered form

Revise. The right to adapt, adjust, modify, or alter the content itself (e.g., translate the content into another language)

Remix. The right to combine the original or revised content with other material to create something new (e.g., incorporate the content into a mashup)

Redistribute.  The right to share copies of the original content, your revisions, or your remixes with others (e.g., give a copy of the content to a friend)

 

 

 

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This material is based on original writing by David Wiley, which was published freely under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license at http://opencontent.org/definition Links to an external site..