LibGuides: Law: Open Education Resources

About OER

"What is OER?" by Ness Generaux for the IDEA Shop at Boise State University, Boise State University IDEA Shop is licensed under CC BY 4.0

OER defined

"Open Educational Resources are teaching, learning and research materials in any medium – digital or otherwise – that reside in the public domain or have been released under an open license that permits no-cost access, use, adaptation and redistribution by others with no or limited restrictions" -- The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation

Examples of OER
Types of OER include (but are not limited to) textbooks, journal articles, syllabi, podcasts, lesson plans, learning modules, lab experiments, simulations, course videos, discussion prompts, assignments, assessments, library guides, and course design templates. In short, OER are teaching, learning and research resources that reside in the public domain or have been released under an intellectual property license that permits their free use and re-purposing by others

OER for Instructors
Instructors use OER in their classes: — showing YouTube videos, using worksheets created and shared by other instructors, and using online simulations as learning activities. Instructors can also create and share syllabi, lesson plans, and even full textbooks for their courses. They can collaborate with instructors at their own institutions, or other institutions around the world. They can access and remix existing OER and republish them to share with others.

Source: "Understanding OER." by SUNY OER Services, OER Community Course is licensed under CC BY 4.0

POTENTIAL BENEFITS of OER

Saves costs and grants access to more quality choices
Students enjoy savings from accessing free quality materials developed by faculty, experts and leading institutions. OER programs have reported that students enjoyed huge savings on the cost of their education.
Lifelong learning
Because OER are open, they enable students to return to course content again and again -- before and after courses.
More clarity/certainty regarding reuse of materials
You will have peace of mind especially if you’re re-using someone else’s materials. The resources are licensed to allow sharing of content. You need not contact the author for permission to use of his/her work as long as it falls within the ‘open’ license.
Customise contents to meet specific teaching needs
OER are fully revisable and remixable and this allows for freedom to revise materials as well as the flexibility to combine parts of resources to ensure that materials are contextualized to a specific course.
Increasing support for "plug and play" resources
For instructors who have little time to adapt resources, OER projects like OpenStax and the Open Learning Initiative (Carnegie Mellon) are increasingly making "packaged" resources available. Packaged resources include textbooks with accompanying ancillary resources (slides, clicker exercises, learning materials).
Student-driven, multi modal learning
OER are one way of engaging students more deeply in the educational process, moving beyond lecture and text. Open education gives instructors the tools to involve students in the creation of learning materials.

Adapted from the Open Educational Resources (OER): Tools for Affordable Learning, Washington State University LibGuide.

"The terms 'Open Content' and 'Open Educational Resources' describe any copyrightable work (traditionally excluding software, which is described by other terms like 'Open Source') that is either in the public domain or licensed in a manner that provides users with free and perpetual permission to engage in the following 5R activities":

5Rs5

This material is based on original writing by David Wiley, which was published freely under a Creative Commons Attribution CC BY 4.0. license at http://opencontent.org/definition/.

Characteristics of a Good OER

Searchable – it can be in multiple locations
Clearly described
Clearly licensed (normally through Creative Commons)
From a source you trust
Easy to modify
Free-standing – it does not assume knowledge of other resources
Free of copyright content
Being used by/recommended by people like you
Imperfect – it just needs to work for you.

Adpated from: The Open University. OpenLearn. Creating open educational resources. What makes a good OER?

OER in Law

Brill Open E-Book Collection
A good number of law titles available including The Independence and Impartiality of ICSID Arbitrators: Current Case Law, Alternative Approaches, and Improvement Suggestions; Principles of Islamic International Criminal Law; The Logic of the Laws; and An Outline of the Recent History of Indonesian Criminal Law.
Cambridge Core - Open Access Books
Includes law and law-related titles - A Critical Introduction to International Criminal Law; Constituting Religion Islam, Liberal Rights, and the Malaysian State; The Sociology of Law and the Global Transformation of Democracy; Governing Climate Change : Polycentricity in Action?; and New Technologies for Human Rights Law and Practice.
DOAB (Directory of Open Access Books) - Law
Discovery services for peer reviewed, open access books. However, many of the law-related textbooks are not in English.
Hamlyn Lectures Archive
This prestigious series of lectures is made available in read-only PDF by the University of Exeter Law School for the period 2005 to 2018. Videos of more recent lectures are available via this website.
OAPEN - Law
Open Access Publishing in European Networks contains freely accessible academic books, mainly in the area of humanities and social sciences. Includes a good number of law texts.
OER Commons Open Textbooks - Law
Project by ISKME to build a public digital library of open access resources.
Open Book Publishers - Law
Open access academic press run by academics and based in the UK. Publications include peer-reviewed, award-winning monographs and textbooks.
OUP Open Access Book Titles
Contains a selection of law and law-related titles from Oxford University Press including The Protection of Non-Traditional Trade Marks; Negotiating Internet Governance; and Towards Gender Equity in Development.
SpringerLink Open Access - Law
Over 100 law and law-related titles are made freely accessible by SpringerLink.

Australian Legal Scholarship Library
Search facility for all academic law journals in Australia and New Zealand. Listing published by AustLII.
Cambridge Core - Open Access Journals
Pure law journals include the German Law Journal and European Law Open.
DOAJ (Directory of Open Access Journals) - Law
An online directory that indexes and provides access to quality open access, peer-reviewed scientific and academic journals. A good selection of law and political science journals are available through DOAJ.
EZB Electronic Journals Library - Jurisprudence
EZB offers structured and standardised access to scientific and academic full text journals covering a wide range of subjects, including several free European legal journals. Maintained by the University Library of Regensburg.
Journals Online (Academy Publishing)
Open access to journals published by the Singapore Academy of Law.
Law Commons
The Digital Commons Network brings together free, full-text scholarly articles from hundreds of universities and colleges worldwide. Curated by university librarians and their supporting institutions, it includes a growing collection of peer-reviewed journal articles.
LLRX
Web journal containing up-to-date topical guides useful for legal researchers.
Oxford Academic - Open Access Journals
Open access content published by Oxford University Press includes a selection of law journals - Journal of Legal Analysis, and Journal of Law and the Biosciences.
SSRN Legal Scholarship Network
One of the largest OA repositories in the world, SSRN has a wide range of the social sciences materials with international coverage, including law.

Class Central - Law
Course aggregator, focusing primarily on free (or free to audit) courses from universities, offered through MOOC platforms.
Coursera - Law
Global online learning platform that offers access to online courses and degrees from world-class universities and companies.
edX - Learn Law ...
Founded by Harvard University and MIT, edX is an online learning destination providing courses from the world’s best universities and institutions. Law courses cover a variety of areas including international law, human rights, property rights, criminal law and contract law.
Harvard University Online Courses - Law
Contains a selection of law and law-related courses run by Harvard University.
MERLOT - Course ePortfolios
Collection consists of discipline-specific learning materials, learning exercises, and Content Builder webpages, together with associated comments, and bookmark collections. All materials are reviewed for suitability for retention in the collection and many also undergo peer review.
MIT OpenCourseWare - Law
Contains materials used in the teaching of almost all of MIT's subjects, including law.
UNSW - Short Courses
The University of New South Wales offers free online courses in conjunction with renowned MOOC providers Coursera, Future Learning and Open Learning, including a few short, law-related courses.

An index to mainly open access legal resources was first set up in 1994 to complement the Law Library's physical collection and was housed on the library's website. To "mirror" the collection, the coverage of resources in the index included mainly websites from various common law and ASEAN jursidictions as well as international law websites.

These indexes have now been incorporated into the library's libguides:

NUS Law Working Paper Series

Browse the following Working Paper Series by NUS Law and its Centres for relevant articles (mostly published on SSRN):

Other Papers by NUS Law Professors

Articles published on Academia - NUS Law include those by: