4.11 Sharing
Learning Objectives
By the end of this chapter, you will be able to:
- Share your open textbook in online repositories properly.
- Assign a DOI for your open textbook.
Sharing Your OER in a Repository
While there are several ways to share your Open Educational Resources once you have created and licensed them, posting them to an Open Educational Resource Repository is a great way to increase the accessibility and audience for your materials. Many repositories will also archive your materials to ensure they are available long-term.
Repositories that Allow Sharing/Uploading
There are several repositories that allow you to upload existing materials or to create content on their platforms to share.
- UBC cIRcle – UBC’s institutional repository
- AMSER – science and math related resources
- HumBox [New Tab] – humanities focused materials
- MERLOT – multidisciplinary and multimedia; can submit materials or create them on MERLOT’s content builder platform
- National Center for Case Study Teaching in Science [New Tab] – science case studies
- OASIS – multidisciplinary; can suggest a resource
- OER Commons – multidisciplinary; can submit materials or create content in their content creation module
- Open Textbook Library – multidisciplinary; can submit textbooks for review
Sharing Process
When making decisions about sharing your open educational resource, you need to first have a sense of purpose and intent for sharing. Are you sharing your resource because you want your students to have easy access to the item, are you sharing it for archival purposes, or to share with your network of educators? Answering these questions will help you make a decision as to where you will share your resource and the type of functionality you need for the place you are sharing.
To share your OER, you will need to:
- Develop standard metadata.
- Select a repository/ies to share.
- Develop a marketing plan.
The following resources and templates will assist you in developing your sharing plan and workflow.
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This template provides a full road map and checklist for sharing an OER, including metadata templates, adoption form, selecting distribution and marketing channels.
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OER Sharing – Choosing an Open Educational Resource Repository [Word Doc]
A list of considerations when selecting a repository to share an open educational resource. -
OER Sharing – Metadata Form [Word Doc]
A form with the most common metadata elements for open educational resource repositories, including definitions of each element.
IMPORTANT: Pressbooks provides a public directory of OERs created within the platform and can be used to publish new OER materials. For more information, please read chapter 6.3 Publish and Distribute.
