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Managing Open Access (OA) and Open Educational Resources (OER) in Alma, Primo VE and Leganto

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Open Access (OA) and Open Educational Resources (OER) are teaching and learning materials that can be freely used and reused at no cost, and without needing to ask permission

What is Open Access
What is the difference between Open Access (OA) and Open Educational Resources (OER)?
  • OER resources are freely available, open-access resources that can be revised, mixed, and redistributed
  • OA resources are freely available but unlike OER, they lack the flexibility for adaption, revision, remixed, and redistribution. They are expected to be used as is
How to manage OA and OER in Alma
  1. Be informed about open-access content in the Central Discovery Index
  2. Review open-access resources from the CDI Collection List or identify them outside Alma
  3. Search and locate open-access electronic collection in Alma Community Zone
  4. Evaluate the collection for quality, relevancy and accuracy
  5. Activate open-access electronic collection in the Institution Zone
  6. Test the link and optimize content for discoverability
  7. Promote and make the resource available to your users

 

For example, search for the Open Textbook Library electronic collection in Alma CZ and Activate

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What are the benefits of adding OA/OER to Alma, Primo, and Leganto
  • Increases visibility of research outputs
  • Increases reach of research to other researchers around the world
  • Increases citation rates and impact readership of research
  • Reducing financial burden on students and institutions
  • Creates transparency and helps users and faculty with free resources
  • Open licenses, allowing for wider accessibility and adaptation
  • Allows easy addition of OER to Leganto course reading lists
  • Allows creative teaching approaches tailored to fit specific course needs
  • The combination of OA and OER materials in a single discovery search interface creates efficiency and serendipity for users to find relevant resources
  • OA and OER contribute to accessible, adaptable, and cost-effective education
How to evaluate OA/OER collection contents in Alma

The Extended Export (from the Portfolio list) provides the following data for evaluation: 

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  • Title - Is this subject area relevant to your users?
  • Publisher – Are you familiar with the publisher?
  • Date of Publication – How current is the content?
  • Material Type – Is it what it says it is?
  • Language – Look out for anything outside the needs of your users
  • Size of the collection – too much might overwhelm users
  • Evaluate the difference between Open Access, Partial Full-text, or Hybrid
Customer Success Best Pratices
  • Only activate relevant content as the more collections activated; the more results will return
  • Remember to test access via Display in Discovery
  • Understand Open Access Indication in Primo VE
  • Add an Open Access indicator to local records
  • Remove Proxy Prefix for Open Access Links
  • Remember to change the collection Service Activation to “Available”
  • Activate Unpaywall Collection in Alma CZ to improve OA linking
  • Use Resource Recommender to promote OA/OER content in Primo
  • Review Primo Analytics Popular Searches reports to identify popular queries and topics trends users are searching and use this data to tag recommended OA/OER resources
For further questions: 
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