What are OER - Open Educational Resources?
Open Educational Resources (OER) are teaching, learning, and research resources that are free of cost and access barriers, and which can be fully used, shared and adapted in the digital environment.
What are OER? Why use OER? Where is OER? How is OER created? Who can help?
OER in Political Science
Open Educational Resources in Political Science
OER books come from many sources. Some are developed by the author specifically to teach a course, some are new textbooks from a commercial publisher, some are older textbooks where the copyright has reverted to the author. Below are some examples of the variety of OER books you can find.
- Attenuated Democracy: A Critical Introduction to U.S. Government and PoliticsThe U.S. political system suffers from endemic design flaws and is notable for the way that a small subset of Americans—whose interests often don’t align with those of the vast majority of the population—wields disproportionate power. Absent organized and persistent action on the part of ordinary Americans, the system tends to serve the already powerful.
- Radical Approaches to Political ScienceThis ground breaking volume offers a range of alternative approaches to political science, highlighting problems too rarely confronted by “mainstream” political scientists, ranging from Gunfighter Sagas to the changing faces of an imaginary Mars.
- Political Science in MotionThis book examines recent developments in political science research, by considering its new influences and its new challenges.
- The Political Economy of PopulismThis book explores the interplay between identity, the economy and inequality to explain the dynamics of populist votes since
the beginning of the 20th century.
OER Search Engines & Finding Aids
- DOAB : Directory of Open Access BooksAll books listed in DOAB are freely accessible and therefore free to read, but this does not mean readers are free to do anything they like with these books. The usage rights of the books in DOAB are determined by the license.
- Mason OER Metafinder (James Mason University)The Mason OER Metafinder helps you find Open Educational Resources. Unlike other OER discovery sites (e.g, OER Commons, OASIS, MERLOT, OpenStax, etc.), OER Metafinder is not a single database. Instead it is a federated search across 21 different sources of open educational materials.
- OER CommonsOER Commons is a public digital library of open educational resources. Explore, create, and collaborate with educators around the world to improve curriculum.
Open Access Books at Commercial Publishers
- JSTOR Open ContentThousands of Open Access ebooks are available from top scholarly publishers, including Brill, Cornell University Press, De Gruyter, and University of California Press.
- The National Academies Press (NAP)The NAP publishes more than 200 books a year on a wide range of topics in science, engineering, and medicine, providing authoritative, independently-researched information. Almost all of the books are available as PDFs that can be downloaded for free by the chapter or by the entire book.
- Springer Open AccessSpringer offers authors the option to publish open access books in a wide range of areas in science, technology, medicine and in the humanities and social sciences. Their books are available to download free of charge from SpringerLink (HTML, PDF, ePub) or Amazon (MOBI).
- Taylor & Francis Open Access Books & ChaptersTaylor & Francis publish books and chapters across all subjects covered by Routledge, CRC Press and other imprints in the humanities, social sciences and behavioral sciences. Currently, over 1000 books are published open access.