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Open Access - Open Educational Resources: Finding Tools

Finding Tools

There are a wide variety of finding tools available to locate both open access and open educational resources.

This is not a complete list, but should provide the tools needed to start searching for OER resources.

Keep in mind that some resources are available through multiple web sites and some are not.

Using Google to Search for OER

Open Access

  Journal Directories:

DOAB  Directory of Open Access Journals - Database of over 16,000 open access journals

 

Sherpa/Romeo - Contains information to open access publishers and journals from around the world

 

  Open Access and Preprint Databases:

arXiv - Curated community supported research - sharing platform.  Accepts a wide variety of research preprints primarily in math & sciences

bioXiv - Free online archive of biology and other life science preprints

Figshare - Repository for research output

medRxiv - Preprint server for the health sciences

PLOS Preprints - PLOS is a nonprofit, Open Access public server for scientific manuscripts

Research Square - Multidisciplinary preprint platform 

Wikipedia -  List of preprint repositories

 

  Open Access Books:

Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB) - Open access peer reviews academic books on diverse topics 

IntechOpen - Authoring platform and directory of science based textbooks and monographs

Open Textbook Library - Freely available textbooks and monographs 

Open Access Theses and Dissertations - Global database  

Oxford Text Archive - Repository of full-text literary and linguistic resources

Pressbooks Directory - Authoring platform and directory of open access textbooks and monographs 

 

  Repositories

COAR  Confederation of Open Access Repositories 

OpenDOAR Directory of Open Access Repositories

ROAR  Registry of Open Access Repositories 

 

  Data Sets

Bureau of Labor Statistics - Economic and employment data

Data.gov -  "data, tools, and resources to conduct research, develop web and mobile applications, design data visualizations"

data europa eu - "The Official Portal of European Data"

Google Dataset Search - "discover datasets hosted in thousands of repositories across the Web"

IEEEDataPort - Datasets - "...offers free access to the datasets on IEEE DataPort" 

UCI Machine Reading Repository (Beta) - 550+ datasets for the machine reading learning community 

VisualData Discovery - find and share computer vision datasets

World Bank Open Data - Free and open access to global development data

 

Searching Within Repositories

Open Educational Resources

  Textbooks

BCcampus Open textbook Collection - Open reviewed textbooks on a variety of subjects and disciplines.

Directory of Open Access Books - 50,000 academic peer-reviewed

OAOpen - Based in the Netherlands "promotes and supports the transition to open access for academic books"

Open Textbook Library - "a comprehensive referatory that points to open textbooks by a variety of authors and publishers."

OpenStax - "publishes high-quality, peer-reviewed, openly licensed college textbooks that are absolutely free online and low cost in print."

Pressbooks Directory - directory of thousands of open access books

Resources by subject are available at the University of Iowa Library - Disciplinary Open Educational Resources 

 

  OER Search Engines

Mason OER Metafinder (MOM) - meta search engine for OER content

Merlot - "curated online learning and support materials and content creation tools"

OASIS - OASIS is a search tool that aims to make the discovery of open content easier. 

OER Commons - " public digital library of open educational resources"

Skillscommon - an open library of technical, vocational, and professional resources

 

  Images/Video

Blush - illustrations for everyone

Digital Collection - Library of Congress

Disabled and Here

Gender Spectrum Collection

Image of Empowerment - "...images celebrating women's lives and their work in 11 countries..."

Librestock - free photos from the top stock sites

Moving Image Archive - Free movies, films, and videos

nappy - Beautiful photos of black and brown people

Open Peeps - A hand-drawn illustration library

Open Verse - Openly licensed images

Open Video Project - a shared digital video collection 

PICNOI - Free stock photos of a colorful world

Plus - Size Stock Photos

Pixabay - 2+ million stock quality 

Redefining women - the noun project

Unsplash -  freely usable images

 

  Music

Free Music Archive - "offers free access to open licensed, original music."

Freeplay Music - A large global music production website, access varies by use (educational/personal)

DRAM - "...provides educational communities with on-demand streaming access to CD-quality audio..."

Global Music Archive - A Global Music Archive