SPARC (the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition) works to enable the open sharing of research outputs and educational materials in order to democratize access to knowledge, accelerate discovery, and increase the return on our investment in research and education.
We believe that the future of education is open. We support initiatives that advance that vision coupled with tangible results that build access to resources, research, and communities committed to open education. Initiatives include a library of OER textbooks, Open Textbook Network (OTN) alliance of higher education institutions, and OER Fellowships
Open Education Week’s goal is to raise awareness about free and open educational opportunities that exist for everyone, everywhere, right now. We want to highlight how open education can help people meet their goals in education, whether that’s to develop skills and knowledge for work, supporting formal studies, learning something new for personal interest, or looking for additional teaching resources.
Student PIRGs (Public Interest Research Groups) organize college students to solve some of the world's most pressing public interest problems, including textbook costs. They conduct research, develop campaigns, and provide resources.
We are a global network of educational institutions, individuals and organizations that support an approach to education based on openness, including collaboration, innovation and collective development and use of open educational materials.
The mission of the Open Policy Network is to foster the creation, adoption and implementation of open policies and practices that advance the public good by supporting open policy advocates, organizations and policy makers, connecting open policy opportunities with assistance, and sharing open policy information.
Sponsored by the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL), this one-of-a-kind book demonstrates the best tools, resources, and techniques for discovering, selecting, and integrating interactive open educational resources (OERs) into the teaching and learning process. The author examines many of the best repositories and digital library websites for finding high quality materials, explaining in depth the best practices for effectively searching these repositories and the various methods for evaluating, selecting, and integrating the resources into the instructor's curriculum and course assignments, as well as the institution's learning management system.
This SPEC Kit explores the degree to which ARL member institutions advocate, support, and develop affordable course content and open educational resources (ACC/OER). Free PDF copies of the sections of the kit are available for download.
The SPARC Libraries & OER Forum (LibOER) is a robust community of practice for academic and research librarians interested in open educational resources (OER). Established in 2013, this network connects more than 825 subscribers primarily in the U.S. and Canada through a public email discussion list and a monthly community discussion call.