Open Educational Resources (OER) and Zero Textbook Cost (ZTC)

This video explains how to find open-access articles for college research using the open access research databases: Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), PLOS ONE, and Hindawi. it also describes how to filter for open access articles on Google Scholar. A brief description of open access is provided. Open-access and hybrid search engines are explained. 

Open Journal Databases

Top OER Repositories

Other OER Repositories

Some Open Access titles are available in the library catalog. 

Search for your subject. When the results appear, find "Sort by" on the left sidebar. 

Under "Availability", check the "Open Access" box. 

If you only want peer reviewed open resources, make sure to check the "Peer Reviewed Journals" option above the "Open Access" option.

Use Google Advanced Search to find resources by license type. Here are directions on how to use Google Advanced Search to find materials with open licenses.

1. Open Google Advanced Search (https://www.google.com/advanced_search).
2. Scroll to the bottom and look for the "usage rights" field.
3. Change the "usage rights" field to one of the options presented:
   • Free to use or share
   • Free to use of share, even commercially
   • Free to use or share or modify
   • Free to use, share, or modify, even commercially
4. Always double check the license on the actual resource! The Google algorithm isn't always accurate.

Search Tips:

• To find specific types of websites such as .gov or .edu, type in the search box Site:.gov or Site:.edu.
   
• To eliminate specific websites or words you can use a minus symbol before the word. For example, if you want to search for something but do not want Wikipedia to show up in the results simply type in the search box -Wikipedia.
   
• Use quotations around a phrase to search for results containing that exact phrase. For example search for "climate change" will return less, but more relevant results than searching for the phrase without quotation marks.

Attribution: ASCCC OERI — OER Basics, Rachel Arteaga & Suzanne Wakim, licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY).

Attributing CC Licensed Work

When providing attribution for Creative Commons licensed works, the goal is to mark the work with full TASL information:

• T = Title
• A = Author (tell reusers who to give credit to)
• S = Source (give reusers a link to the resource)
• L = License (link to the CC license deed)