Open Educational Resources (OERs) are learning, teaching, and research materials that are free to access through open licensing. They enable users to access, reuse, repurpose, adapt, and redistribute educational content at no cost. Similarly, preprints hosted on online servers like Preprints.org also use open licenses, such as CC BY 4.0, allowing the scholarly material to be handled in a similar way to OERs.
In this article, we’ll explore this similarity by asking whether preprints can be considered as a type of OER.
What are Open Educational Resources?
Open Educational Resources are important educational materials that are freely available to be accessed and utilised via open licensing, as outlined by UNESCO:
[They] are learning, teaching and research materials in any format and medium that reside in the public domain or are under copyright that have been released under an open license, that permit no-cost access, re-use, re-purpose, adaptation and redistribution by others.
Open licensing is key in determining how these materials are used. This type of licensing is facilitated by Creative Commons (CC) licenses. These licenses provide the technical and legal framework for permission to be granted in advance for educational materials, rather than negotiating individual permissions separately.
Learning, teaching, and research materials come in many forms. Examples of OERs include:
- Recorded lectures, seminars, and courses;
- Handouts;
- Essays;
- Diagrams;
- Data;
- Animations;
- Videos;
- Presentation slides;
- Reading lists.
Why do they matter?
The open access movement has highlighted the need for equitable and sustainable access to scholarly, educational content. Open Educational Resources allow people from around the world to learn about the latest research in a variety of free-to-access formats.
In many ways, OERs are a response to inequalities within educational and institutional settings. Significant barriers to essential teaching and learning materials – such as exploitative library subscription fees, restrictive licensing, and complicated technical infrastructure limiting access – affect students and academics alike.
How they work
OERs help create a more sustainable learning environment for students and academics, proving beneficial for cost savings and curriculum flexibility within educational contexts.
For students, OERs guarantee immediate access to information in a variety of digital formats and with no financial limitations. Moreover, they are beneficial to academic success, improving educational outcomes whilst addressing issues of high textbook costs limiting student access to research.
For academics, OERs facilitate the teaching process. They foster collaboration and innovation within the classroom by allowing resources to be easily created and shared with others. Traditional textbooks may be limited in their format or scope; OERs are adaptable to the changing needs of teachers and students.
Finally, OERs benefit the universities themselves. Importantly, they reduce pressure on already limited budgets. Furthermore, they comply with broader institutional aims like democratising education and supporting workforce development.
Are preprints Open Educational Resources?
Preprints are non-peer-reviewed scholarly manuscripts made freely available online. Preprints.org publishes preprints under a CC BY 4.0 license. This agreement means that they function similar to Open Educational Resources in terms of access, reuse, repurposing, adaption, and redistribution.
Despite these similarities, preprints are not typically classed as OERs. Traditional OERs are designed for usage in educational contexts such as classrooms. In contrast, preprints facilitate the dissemination of research findings to the academic community via online servers.
However, the question of whether preprints can be classed as a type of OER largely depends on the context in which preprints might be used in.
How preprints can be used in practice
Because of their open licensing, preprints and their findings can be used in educational contexts, just like Open Educational Resources.
For example, data from a preprint can be freely turned into infographics for use in classroom handouts and presentation slides, as long as it is used with appropriate caution. Elsewhere, entire methods sections from preprints can be turned into animations or videos to benefit students approaching scientific methodology for the first time.
The contents of a preprint don’t necessarily have to be adapted into other formats to be useful in educational settings, though. Teachers can circulate preprints in full within their curricula to highlight emerging trends and recent developments within certain scientific fields.
In summary, preprints can serve as valuable educational resources. However, we should understand that they have specific nuances that differentiate them from traditional OERs. Preprint findings may be able to be adapted or used in educational settings with ease due to creative commons licensing, but teachers and students need to be aware that preprints are not peer reviewed, and therefore methods and data are preliminary until further verification.
Benefit from open licensing at Preprints.org
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