Authored by Ryan Lorenz, UNG Press Intern | Banner Image “OER Logo Open Educational Resources,” Author: Markus Büsges, Source: Wikimedia Deutschland e. V., License: CC BY-SA 4.0.
Every semester, a familiar shock arrives with the syllabus. A single required textbook can run well past $100, and once the access code expires or a new edition arrives, that investment disappears, and options to resell old textbooks are few and far as they slowly grow out of date. However, Open Educational Resources are a different model, one that focuses on sharing, and educational growth rather than profit first. As Georgia’s leading university press for OER and open textbooks, the University of North Georgia (UNG) Press has helped develop OER for general-education courses across colleges and universities within and beyond the state.
What are OER?
Open Educational Resources are learning, teaching, and research materials in any format or medium that reside in the public domain or have been released under an open license permitting free use and adaptation (UNESCO). OER can be full textbooks, lecture slides, problem sets, lab manuals, videos, images, quizzes, or even entire courses. What makes a resource “open” is the license attached to it, not the medium it arrives in.
That license is the heart of the matter. Most OER carry a Creative Commons license, which grant permissions that ordinary copyright withholds (SPARC Europe). Those permissions are often summed up as the “5 Rs”: you can retain a copy, reuse it in your classroom, revise it to fit your students, remix it with other materials, and redistribute the result (Speer; Wiley). A biology instructor can delete two chapters, add a regional case study, swap in clearer diagrams, and post the updated version all without writing a single permission request.
How OER Differ from Traditional Materials
A conventional textbook is something students will often rent access to or pay a large sum of money to own. You pay for it and you’re forbidden from copying or altering it. Open Educational Resources are the opposite; they cost students nothing, they can be legally adapted, and they don’t expire. The difference isn’t price alone, but control over the text. Instructors are not bound to be adopters of a fixed product and become authors and curators of their own course materials.
It’s worth clearing up a common point of confusion here. OER are not the same as open access (Speer). Open access typically means a scholarly article is free to read, but it may still be fully copyrighted, with no right to adapt or redistribute it. OER go further: the open license explicitly permits reuse and revision (Speer). Reading access is the baseline open access offers; OER goes even further, letting instructors revise the material to fit their classroom.
Why It Matters
The benefits are plentiful when it comes to OER. Students save money and, just as important, they also have their materials on day one rather than waiting until they can afford them, meaning they are ready to go from the start without the need to play catch-up. Instructors gain the freedom to tailor the content to their classroom. Institutions can advance affordability and equity goals without sacrificing quality, because OER can be translated, localized, and redesigned to meet accessibility standards in ways that a locked PDF couldn’t.
That last point speaks to a common misconception: that “free” means “second-rate.” Many OER are peer-reviewed, professionally edited, and as rigorous as any commercial title; they simply operate under a different economic model.
Where UNG Press Fits In
As an extension of the University of North Georgia, the UNG Press carries the university’s mission of broad, affordable access to education into its catalog, treating accessible, affordable, and adaptable course materials as part of the university’s commitment to the public good. Through our partnerships with the University System of Georgia, Affordable Learning Georgia, and eCore, UNG Press is the state’s leading publisher of OER and open textbooks. To see what that looks like in practice, explore the titles in the Textbooks & OER and Affordable Learning Partner Texts sections of our online bookstore.
Sources
“Open Educational Resources.” UNESCO, www.unesco.org/en/open-educational-resources. Accessed 24 June 2026.
“What Are Open Educational Resources?” SPARC Europe, sparceurope.org/what-we-do/open-education/open-educational-resources/. Accessed 24 June 2026.
Speer, Elizabeth. “OER- Open Educational Resources: The 5Rs- What Makes OER Different from OA.” Gibson D. Lewis Health Science Library, University of North Texas Health Science Center, 27 Aug. 2025, libguides.unthsc.edu/OER/5Rs.
Wiley, David. “Defining the ‘Open’ in Open Content and Open Educational Resources | Improving Learning.” Improving Learning, 26 Sept. 2023, opencontent.org/definition/.
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