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Open education and educational resources, Open education and educational resources, open access to scholarly publications. National policy and executive plan by the higher education and research community for 2021–2025: Policy component for open access to theses

Objective of the policy

Creating, using and joint development of open educational resources and other open educational practices are part of daily work in higher education and enable continuous learning.

Introduction

This policy applies to open education, open access to educational resources and open educational practices. Research and education have always been closely linked. Research reveals new knowledge that is disseminated more widely to people and that is learned as part of an individual’s own skills. This is why openness in science and research is inherently linked to openness in education. In order for the general public to genuinely be able to utilise research results that have been made open, the results often need to be processed into a form that serves and facilitates the exploitation, dissemination and learning of the results. The open availability of materials developed for needs of education, i.e. educational resources, thus serves to raise awareness of research results. Open educational resources and new types of more open educational practices, for example, those offered by digitalisa­tion, reduce the need to tie education, learning and teaching to a specific time and place. In this way open education becomes a natural part of a new type of flexible education, in which every­one, regardless of their situation in life and place of residence, has more opportunities to learn new things. The policy is the result of collaboration within the Finnish university and research community, constituting a shared view of the direction that the openness of education and educational resources should take.

Freedom of the teacher and the researcher

The aim of the policy is to achieve openness in a way that supports and increases the freedom and opportunities of teachers and researchers to share researched information in their teaching and in the educational resources they have prepared. The purpose of educational resources is to distribute research­ based information to society as a whole. Teachers and researchers must be able to choose the best methods for this purpose in their teaching and educational resources. The higher education and research community must guarantee incentives and structures for the open education and educa­tional resources in a way that respects, on an equal basis, the work done by teachers and researchers to develop education and educational resources.

INTERNATIONAL AND NATIONAL FRAMEWORK This policy has been prepared using the extensive domestic and international work that has been done to improve open education and educational resources. Important international sources for drafting the policy have been the European Com­mission publication Practical Guidelines on Open Education for Academics: modernising higher education via open educa-tional practices (2019) and the UNESCO Recommendation on Open Educational Resources (OER, 2019). Significant national achievements include the national Library of Open Educational Resources1 developed by the Ministry of Education and the Finnish National Agency for Education and coordinated by CSC, and ARENE’s and UNIFI’s shared vision for the digitalisation of higher education institutions2.1Introduction in stages 2019–2020, see aoe.fi2See digivisio2030.fi/en.RISKS AND THREATSEven though open educational resources and other openly accessible education are available to their users for free, a wide range of resources are required for their creation and other development. There is a risk that costs and workloads will accumulate among those individuals and organisations that are particularly active in opening up education and educational resources. The higher education and research community should consider sharing the costs and workloads arising from opening up education and educational resources and take care of their necessary resourcing.There is also a risk that authors will be forced to open up edu­cation and educational resources. To prevent this risk, a national recommendation highlighting the author’s decision­making power has been drawn up, The obligation to open all types of education and all types of educational resources is not even justified, as some of the education and educational resources may not work well outside a particular teaching situation. Instead of imposing an obligation, the best way to open up education is by encouraging, for example, giving recognition and merits for opening up education and educational resources.OPEN EDUCATION AND EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES • POLICY COMPONENTS 1 AND 2 6Another kind of threat can arise from the belief that open educational resources and other openly accessible education could alone form the foundation for learning and education and replace interactive classroom study. Classroom study must not be forgotten when promoting open education, and the overall quality of education should be monitored regularly. In addition, the opportunities provided by open education and open educational resources should be utilised to improve the quality of learning and teaching.The learned societies and other domestic scholarly publishers share the concern that open access to educational resources will have an adverse impact on their financial operational precondi­tions. However, high­quality popular research­based publications that are written and edited for special areas have a place along­side open educational resources. Open educational resources can also create markets for various value­added services.There are also concerns regarding financial operational pre­conditions in universities offering commercial education and education export. Since the policy does not require the openness of all education, higher education institutions will have the opportunity to commercialise the education. In addition, open educational resources and other openly accessible education offer opportunities for marketing. High­quality open educational resources or online courses can be a sign of a high­quality educational player and so attract learners to also benefit from commercial products and services.STRUCTURE AND BACKGROUND OF THE POLICYThe policy has been prepared by the Finnish higher educa­tion and research community. A working group commissioned separately by the Expert Panel in Open Education under the Open Science Coordination of the Federation of Finnish Learned Societies (TSV) has been responsible for ensuring the progress of the work. The work has been guided by the Finnish National Open Science and Research Steering Group. The policy supports the Declaration for Open Science and Research 2020–2025.33https://doi.org/10.23847/isbn.9789525995251.The policy is composed of joint principles and policy compo­nents of (a) open access to educational resources and (b) open educational practices that determine objectives and actions.The principles define the general terms and conditions for promoting open education and educational resources. They consist of important principles for the higher education and research community that must be adhered to in the promotion OPEN EDUCATION AND EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES • POLICY COMPONENTS 1 AND 2 7of openness. The objectives recorded in the policy components are more time­dependent goals that involve concrete actions. A changing international environment will impact the objectives and the actions they involve sooner than it will impact the principles.IMPLEMENTATION AND FOLLOW-UPThe policy is applied in higher education and in various forms of continuous learning in which the organisations of the higher education and research community participate, for example, as organisers or partners. This policy can also be used, where appro­priate, for the planning of the practices of open education and open educational resources of other educational organisations.The policy will take effect step by step from 1 January 2021 onwards. The details of the policy are specified in the recom­mendations, of which by 31 May 2022 have been published the following:•Recommendation on the copyright issues to be taken into consideration in the open publication of educational resources•Quality criteria for open education. Part 1. The quality criteria for open educational resources•Guidelines on accessibility of open educational resources,•Recommendation on gaining merit in open education and open educational resources•Competence requirements for open educationMonitoring of the implementation of the policy is the responsi­bility of Open Science Coordination, which also annually deter­mines, using the expertise of the Expert Panel in Open Education, the appropriate target levels for the follow­up. The policy will be updated in 2024.OPEN EDUCATION AND EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES • POLICY COMPONENTS 1 AND 2

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Opening up education or Open Education means extending access to and participation in education to larger audiences and target groups by lowering barriers to education and increasing accessibility, unrestrictedness, offering and learner-centeredness. It diversifies the possibilities of teaching, learning and building, joint development and sharing of knowledge and combines the pathways of formal and nonformal learning. Although open education is often carried out using digital technologies, open education is not the same as digital education or digitalisation of educational resources.

Open educational resources mean materials or information in any form and used on any medium, partly designed for teaching and learning purposes, which have been:

• released for public use (public domain) or;
• shared by an open licence that permits no-cost access, reuse, repurpose, adaptation and redistribution by others.

In addition, when calculating the amount of open educational resources, the calculations shall also take into account the educational resources prepared prior to the entry into force of the policy, which have been licensed by partially open licences prohibiting the publication of versions modified based on the resources, the commercial use of the resources, or both (for example Creative Commons licences including ND or NC conditions). Although scholarly publications can be used as educational resources, especially at higher education levels, and although openness of scholarly publications therefore makes these open as educational resources as well, this policy applies, above all, to educational resources which are not primarily scholarly publications. In addition, according to the policy, open educational resource must be a pedagogically meaningful whole that can be utilised in education.

The definition of open educational resources is in line with the definition of open educational resources given in the UNESCO Recommendation on Educational Resources 2019, except that the reference to research materials has been omitted, because these will be discussed in the Policy of open access to research materials and methods.