The report is based on [our] own research work, expert workshops and other consultations with many international projects that promote the creation, sharing and re-use of Open Educational Resources (OER)....
The report covers the following areas:
Policies, institutional frameworks and business models;
Open Access and open content repositories;
Laboratories of open educational practices and resources.
For each of these areas, drivers/enablers and inhibitors of OER and open educational practices are identified and described in detail....
In the full report, see esp. Chapter 5.3 ("Open Access and open content repositories" pp. 72-86) and Chapter 6.2 (the roadmap brief on the same topic, pp. 112-113), which both cover OA to research as well as OA to courseware.
From the full report:
[p. 23] OLCOS’ approach is different in that it does not primarily emphasise open educational resources but open educational practices, which, however, can benefit much from open access to resources such as content and tools....
[pp. 25-26] Arguably, the key problem of current open access educational repositories may be that, despite their philosophy of sharing, they see teachers and learners as consumers of content who primarily want to download useful material. A better approach would be to support communities of interest around certain subjects (for example, in history or biology) by providing, alongside the content, mechanisms for adding comments on how best to use some content, for documenting one’s own project results, creating links to related content, and discussing new issues in certain subject areas....
[p. 57] There is an established understanding that easy access to educational resources is required to promote lifelong learning by active learners of all ages. Also the role of such access in reducing social inequalities, fostering social inclusion of migrants, and supporting education in developing countries is often acknowledged....
[p. 68] Confronted with the current strong move towards Open Access strategies, most publishers seem to take a defensive position....Publishers see established commercial models being endangered...and are urging governments to maintain fair competition and avoid unbalanced allocation of funding....A frequent suggestion also is to explore new business models based on public–private partnerships; however, it remains unclear what this could mean beyond governments funding licensing of their content....
[p. 69] Even regarding the more advanced STM (Science, Technology, Medicine) publishing domain there is growing dissatisfaction among market observers with the lack of innovativeness of publishers....
[p. 81] Reviews of content recruitment strategies [at institutional repositories] confirm that voluntary policies are not efficient in filling up self-archiving repositories of universities and other larger academic institutions. Researchers from the Canadian Association of Research Libraries (CARL), which supports institutional repository projects of CARL members, conclude: “Certainly the most effective strategy for content recruitment is to implement an institutional policy requiring the archiving of research publications into IRs....Such a mandatory policy is infinitely preferable to voluntary compliance (provided that the library is prepared to take on the duties required) because of course it solves the riddle of successful content recruitment.” ... Also, the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) have learned that their voluntary public access policy has not produced the expected result....
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
I recommend the OA tracking project (OATP) as the best way to stay on top of new OA developments. You can read the OATP feed on a blog-like web page or subscribe to it by RSS, email, or Twitter. You can also help build the feed by tagging new developments you encounter.
