Open Access: Introduction

Open access resources are online books, articles, images, and other resources that anyone can read or download for free, anywhere, any time. No Hodges University or other institutional affiliation is needed to obtain access. OA resources often come with extensive reusage rights (use or adapt for your own purposes without permissions or payment). For a summary of open access scholarship, please see Peter Suber's Very Brief Introduction.

Creative Commons (CC) offers free and easy-to-use copyright licenses for anyone to use. CC licensing gives the public permission to share and use your creative work, under conditions of your choice. Simply select a license, then embed the code in your course site.

Most CC-licensed works can be used or adapted freely for educational purposes, as long as the author is cited. Particularly useful for educators and graphic designers.

An example of a CC license is below.

Read the Case for OA - https://www.birds.cornell.edu/ccb/making-a-case-for-open-access/

• Lifelong learning - students can continue to access OA resources after graduation.
• Author rights - scholars need not sign all their rights away to publishers.
• Reliable access - institutional budget cuts do not jeopardize access to OA resources.
• Better collections - OA resources can grow and diversify library collections at no cost.
• Access - researchers and the public can more easily obtain current, scholarly data
• Visibility - get your scholarly achievements noticed and cited more frequently.

High school student Jack Andraka made an award-winning medical breakthrough thanks to open access. Interview by the director of the National Institutes of Health.