LibGuides: Open Educational Resources: Natural Science

Using the OER Guide

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Natural Science--Open Access Resources
These teaching and learning materials can be altered and reused by anyone under the conditions of the Creative Commons license of the work.

Open Books & Textbooks

Use the following databases and collections to search for OER textbooks suitable for your courses. Faculty are encouraged to "work backwards" by reassessing their learning outcomes and objectives on their syllabi and then locating OER materials that align.

Peer-Reviewed Open-Access Textbooks:

DOAB: Directory of Open Access Books
DOAB is a discovery service for peer-reviewed open access books and book publishers.
OpenStax
OpenStax contains peer-reviewed, openly licensed, free textbooks.

Other Sources for Quality OER Materials:

British Columbia Open Collection
Selection of OER resources meeting high standards set by educators in British Columbia, Canada.
Library of Congress Open Access Books
This is a growing online collection of contemporary open access e-books.
Libretexts
Platform for accessing and customizing OER textbooks and other materials
OAOPEN.org
OAOPEN promotes and supports the transition to open access for academic books from European networks.
OER Commons - Advanced Search
OER Commons is searchable by material type/medium, subject area, and other parameters. Find textbooks by checking "Textbook" under "Material Type" when searching.
OER Commons - Open Textbooks
Platform for easily browsing textbook titles organized by subject, level, and other parameters
Open Access MUSE
Discover open access resources in the Humanities from Project Muse.
Open Library from Internet Archive
The goal of the Open Library is to make published works available to everyone in the world. Make a personal account to log in to the Library.
Open Oregon
Course materials used by Oregon community college and university instructors to reduce textbook costs.
Open Research Library
The Open Research Library (ORL) includes more than 200,000 open access books.
Open Textbook Initiative
These open textbooks are approved by the American Institute of Mathematics
Open Textbook Library
Textbooks in the Open Textbook Library are considered open because they are free to use and distribute, and are licensed to be freely adapted or changed with proper attribution.
PDXOPEN
The Portland State University Library publishes open educational resources (OERs) and open access textbooks that are free to anyone in the world.
Project Gutenberg
Find some of the world’s great literature here, with focus on older works for which U.S. copyright has expired.
Standard Ebooks
Use this collection of high quality, open source, public domain ebooks free of U.S. copyright restrictions.

Natural Science--Open Access Journals
The publishers have made these journals free and accessible to everyone.