"Open access is a model of scholarly communication that promises to greatly improve the accessibility of results of research. In general terms, scholarly research that is published in open access is digital, online, free of charge, and free of most copyright and licensing restrictions (although it does require that proper attribution of works be given to authors)." Canadian Association of Research Libraries
Open Educational Resources (OER) are teaching and learning materials that are openly licensed, freely available, and created with the intent to use and reuse. OER are available in a wide range of formats including textbooks, streaming media, course materials such as syllabi, tests, modules, digital content and more.
The following repositories contain high quality collections of open textbooks and other course materials:
Assessing OER:
The eCampus Ontario open library provides Curator, a guide for assessing open educational resources.
Any questions about discovering, using, or creating OER can be sent to: Emily Carlisle
Western Libraries subscribes to many e-journals which you will find as you search OMNI, including open access journals indexed in the widely used Directory of Open Access Journals.
National Emergency Library is a collection of books that supports emergency remote teaching, research activities, independent scholarship, and intellectual stimulation while universities, schools, training centers, and libraries are closed.
Unpaywall is a web browser extension that finds free versions of paywalled papers and is completely free and legal.
Western Libraries journal publishing service offers a no-fee local publication facility for students and faculty who wish to publish an online open access journal. We partner with the Ontario Council of University Libraries (OCUL) and Scholars Portal to host and distribute more than 30 open access journals.
