The African Digital Scholar

Open Access and Open Educational Resources: how the UFS can contribute to free and equitable access to research and education

This week held the SANLiC bi-annual conference. For those not familiar with SANLiC, it is the South African National Library and Information Consortium. In their own words they assist "member institutions and client libraries to acquire better value for money digital collections than they could individually. Working on a non-profit, cost recovery basis, it primarily harnesses collective buying power to negotiate and secure electronic license agreements for digital content." Their negotiations also include what is called transformative agreements with publishers, which looks to change existing subscription models to journals where an author or institution pays to publish (and adding article processing charges (APCs) for open access) ánd the institution pays subscription fees to access the journals. Transformative agreements aim to reduce this combined publishing and reading expenditure by having a single agreement for both. In other words, the institutional subscription gives not only reading access, but allows authors to publish their articles in open access. And this is one step towards supporting open access at the UFS.

Authors at the UFS know how difficult it is to get funding for APCs. The Library and Information Services (LIS) has long been campaigning for an open access fund to support UFS authors, and in 2021 savings from electronic resources and a generous contribution from central strategic UFS funds allowed them to create the Open Access Publications Fund (OAPF). But those savings would not have been possible if not for mechanisms like transformative agreements. And those agreements include the principle that all publications must be under an open license, preferably the Creative Commons Attribution license (CC BY). Which brings us to the theme of this post: how can we contribute to open access? As you can see, it is a collective effort. The very first principle in the SANLiC transformative agreement guide is

"Inclusivity and social justice must be core. Publishers must have an equity, diversity and inclusion plan that addresses the challenges of researchers in the global south."

The LIS plays a role in making these agreements with publishers for the benefit of our authors and readers. Authors play a role in engaging with their publishers to ensure they retain copyright and share their work under an open license or select gold open access journals to publish in. Consortiums like SANLiC contribute with their support for electronic license agreements. The institution assists with APC funding and supporting open access as the path to equitable access to research and education.

This brings us to Open Educational Resources (OER). Open Access is the free and immediate access to research on the internet where authors keep the copyright of their work, there is zero embargo period to access their work, and a CC license is added to share their work. Creative Commons define open education as "an idea, a set of content, practices, policy, and community which, properly leveraged, can help everyone in the world access free, effective, open learning materials for the marginal cost of zero. We live in an age of information abundance where everyone, for the first time in human history, can potentially attain all the education they desire. The key to this transformational shift in learning is Open Educational Resources (OER)."

"OER are education materials that are shared at no cost with legal permissions for the public to freely use, share, and build upon the content."

A lot of conversations at the SANLiC conference revolved around expensive textbooks, limited access to e-books, digital rights management and other restrictive technology applied to electronic resources. Managing electronic resources at the LIS is one of the most complex tasks. Thousands of individual books and journals, subscriptions to packages with varying access to titles, and linking from one publisher to another so that access between publishers is as seamless as possible for the user. But even the best electronic resources management does not give the equitable access that open resources can. David WIley, an education fellow at Creative Commons, summarises it as follows:

So this is another way in which the UFS can contribute to free and equal access to resources: OER. The obvious benefit to the student is saving money, but research has been done to indicate that OER can also result in better outcomes for the students. And by using OER the UFS's goals in decolonisation of their curriculum can be achieved, as well as providing our students with contextual teaching and learning material. Our OER collection has only recently been established, and the LIS is supporting and creating awareness in the teaching and learning community of the UFS. 

Before this post becomes too long-winded (if it hasn't already!) remember that openness in education is beneficial for so many reasons, whether it is through Open Access of research output (removing paywalls) or opening up educational resources with OER (high-quality textbooks for students):

• Saving money!
• Reducing duplication of research efforts and in educational resources.
• Increasing visibility of research, researchers and institutions, including the teaching and learning expertise through OER.
• Looking after local interests and goals in research, but also providing relevant context in learning and teaching materials.
• A good reputation, trust and standing in academia through visibility, collaboration and sharing in an open environment.

"Another reason why I care about open educational resources is I believe that everyone in the world should have access and equal access to high-quality and effective educational resources and today that's not the case. If you have money you're able to afford what you need for your educational resources and if you don't have a lot of money, you're simply not able to afford it. That's not right in a world where we can share educational resources at the marginal cost of zero."

[The content in this post may be used, adapted or shared with a CC BY SA license.]