Happy Open Access Week!
From October 21-27, 2024 the Patrick Power Library is celebrating International Open Access Week! This year’s theme of Community over Commercialization emphasizes the value of freely accessible, high-quality scholarly information and aligns with our university community’s without limits philosophy.
What is Open Access?
Open Access (OA) is a publishing model that aims to increase access to the results of scholarly research by providing free and unrestricted online availability to research articles and data. As a type of open material, Open Educational Resources (OERs) are designed for educational use and feature an open copyright license that allows the material to be freely accessed, shared and adapted. Many OA and OER materials go through the traditional peer-review process, or are reviewed by experts before publication to ensure quality.
OA publishing provides valuable benefits to scholarly and wider communities, including:
- Increased researcher ability to build on the findings of others without restriction.
- Fair and equitable access to research participation globally, in both developed and developing countries.
- Teachers and students have access to the latest research findings.
- Cost savings for university and college students.
As Dan Phillips, our Data Services & Copyright Librarian explains: “Open Access materials do more than lower the cost of learning materials for students; they also help our researchers increase their reach and receive credit for work by providing their scholarly outputs without publisher paywalls,” says Dan.
“For grant funders and the taxpayer that supports them, sponsoring Open Access publishing can maximize return on investment by making research accessible to audiences beyond academia.”
Open Textbooks in the SMU Community
Saint Mary’s is pleased to participate in AtlanticOER, a service led by the Council of Atlantic Academic Libraries (CAAL) to support the hosting and creation of OERs, including open textbooks, for classroom teaching and learning. As part of the larger OER movement, many instructors use open textbooks in the classroom as an alternative to expensive commercial textbooks.
AtlanticOER provides annual grant funding to instructors to assist with development and adaptation of OERs within Atlantic region universities and colleges. To date, open textbooks produced through AtlanticOER have saved students across the Atlantic region over $1 million in costs, and are freely available for use in Saint Mary’s courses through the Pressbooks platform.
AtlanticOER will continue to support open textbook development and adaptation over the next three years, operating on funding from the governments of Nova Scotia, Newfoundland & Labrador, New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island.
Several Saint Mary’s faculty are currently involved in AtlanticOER funded work to develop new OERs, reducing costs and making educational resources more accessible to all students.
How You Can Get Involved
There are many ways faculty and instructors can get involved in the open access movement within our Saint Mary’s University community:
- Consider incorporating OERs, like open textbooks, in your classroom.
- Explore the Pressbook Directory and discover OERs from within the Atlantic region.
- Search the complete Pressbook Directory collection of thousands of OERs.
- Visit the Patrick Power Library’s Open Textbooks Guide.
- Consider developing your own open textbook for classroom use. Keep an eye out for the next OER development grant funding cycle, which will open in early 2025.
Have questions? The Patrick Power Library is pleased to assist all faculty and instructors interested in learning more about incorporating OERs in the classroom. To arrange a meeting, please contact Dan Phillips, Data Services & Copyright Librarian, at Dan.Phillips@smu.ca
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