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Scholarly Publishing & Communication : Open Education Resources (OERs)

Guide to resources on scholarly publishing and communications. Includes information on copyright, open access, data archiving, government mandates for data sharing, and measuring citation rates.

What are Open Education Resources, and Why are they important?

Open Education Resources are college textbooks that are free for students to use. The rising costs of college textbooks in higher education is an economic challenge that students and families face. Thus, the University System of Georgia is among the leaders in public higher education institutions to support the creation of OERs that mitigate these economic factors. USG launched the Affordable Learning Georgia which offers grants for faculty in Georgia's public higher education institutions to create open textbooks that either born digital or were transformed from a traditional textbook. USG advocated a highly rigorous peer review system to ensure the quality of open textbooks.