| This guide was created as a tool for users to learn about open sources of information related to agricultural studies. Information that is open (free to use and free from most copyright restrictions) enables more readers to access this knowledge and makes it easier to share this knowledge with their communities because traditional barriers (e.g. purchasing costs and copyright limitations) are removed. The goal of this guide is to highlight quality resources, how to find them and critically analyze them, as well as encourage information sharing with other UFV Library stakeholders and patrons such as alumni and community users. We can all do our part in supporting open access and open education initiatives by learning about them and sharing their benefits with others. That being said, the UFV Library expands a great effort to acquire non-open high quality research resources (e.g. books, journals, and videos) for its patrons and some of those materials will be highlighted in the guide to demonstrate the Library's breath of resources in this subject area. |
Photo by Maja Petric on Unsplash |
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Open Access can be defined as "Open Access is the free, immediate, online availability of research articles combined with the rights to use these articles fully in the digital environment" (SPARC, n.d.). Open Educational Resources are "Teaching, learning, and research resources that permit free use and repurposing because they are under an open-copyright licence or because they reside in the public domain and are not copyrighted" (Aesoph, 2018). |
Therefore, open resources can be accessed not only by UFV students and faculty, but also alumni, and anyone with access to the internet. Removal of copyright restrictions can allow for faculty to post full text materials on BlackBoard or enable students can copy/print as many chapters as they want (always check the licensing information for the open resource you are using to make sure you are allowed to use it the way you would like to).
