What are Open Educational Resources (OERs)?

Open Educational Resources are any type of teaching and learning material that are in the public domain or have been released under an open licence. At UCT, there is significant support for OERs from the Centre for Innovation in Learning and Teaching (CILT).

Find Open Textbooks

Access over 80 million open books from various subject disciplines

A comprehensive list of over 80 million open resources has been compiled, consisting of subjects across the different disciplines. These free scholarly resources can be read online or downloaded to read offline, on various mobile devices.

Open Textbooks and Books (Word version)

  • Open Textbook Library

    Open Textbook Library logo

    Open textbooks are textbooks that have been funded, published, and licensed to be freely used, adapted, and distributed. These books have been reviewed to assess their quality and can be downloaded at no cost. All textbooks are either used at multiple higher education institutions; or affiliated with an institution, scholarly society, or professional organization. The link includes all subjects and you can select a subject of interest by highlighting Browse Subjects. Visit the Open Textbook Library

    Breakdown by Faculty or Subject

    Accounting and Finance

     

    Business Textbooks

    Includes Human Resources, Management, Marketing

    Computer Science & Information Systems Textbooks

     

    Economics

     

    Education

     

    Engineering

     

    Humanities

    Includes Arts, History, Languages, Linguistics Literature, Rhetoric, and Poetry Philosophy

    Journalism, Media Studies & Communications

     

    Law

     

    Mathematics

    Includes Applied and Pure mathematics

    Medicine

     

    Natural Science

    Includes Biology, Chemistry, Physics, Earth Sciences

    Social Sciences

    Includes Psychology, Sociology

  • OAPEN ( Open Access Publishing in European Networks )

    Online library and publication platform (OAPEN) logo

    OAPEN promotes and supports the transition to open access for academic books by providing open infrastructure services to stakeholders in scholarly communication. The objective is to build a quality-controlled collection of open access books and provide services for publishers, libraries, and research funders in the areas of hosting, deposit, quality assurance, dissemination, and digital preservation. Visit the OAPEN website

    Breakdown by Faculty or Subject

    All textbooks

    Literary studies

    Education

    Social Sciences

    Economics

    Sociology

    History

    Media Studies

    Law

    Politics & Government

    Linguistics

     

  • OER Commons

    OER Commons logo

    OER Commons is a public digital library of open educational resources including textbooks. Open Educational Resources (OER) offer opportunities for systemic change in teaching and learning content through engaging educators in new participatory processes and effective technologies for engaging with learning. Visit the OER Commons website.

    Browse by Faculty or Subject

    Applied science

    Hyperlink includes: Applied Science Includes Architecture and Design, Computer Science, Engineering, Environmental Science, “Health, Medicine and Nursing”, Information Science

    Arts & Humanities

    Hyperlink includes: Art History, Graphic Arts, Languages, Literature, Performing Arts, Philosophy, Religious Studies, Visual Arts, World Cultures

    Business and Communication

    Hyperlink includes: Accounting, Communication, Finance, Journalism, Management, Marketing, Public Relations

    Career and Technical Education

    Hyperlink includes: Agriculture, Automotive Technology and Repair, Criminal Justice, Culinary Arts, Electronic Technology, Environmental Studies, Film and Music Production, Graphic Design, Manufacturing Maritime Science, Welding

    Education

    Hyperlink includes: Early Childhood Development, Educational Technology, Elementary Education, Higher Education, Language Education (ESL), Special Education

    English Language Arts

    Hyperlink includes: Composition and Rhetoric, “Language, Grammar and Vocabulary”, Reading Foundation Skills, Reading Informational Text, Reading Literature, Speaking and Listening

    History

    Hyperlink includes: Ancient History, U.S. History, World History

    Law

    Hyperlink includes: General Law

    Life Science

    Hyperlink includes: Anatomy/Physiology, Biology, Botany, Ecology, Forestry and Agriculture, Genetics, Nutrition, Zoology

    Mathematics

    Hyperlink includes: Algebra, Calculus, Functions, Geometry, Measurement and Data, Numbers and Operations, Ratios and Proportions, Statistics and Probability, Trigonometry

    Physical Science

    Hyperlink includes: Astronomy, Atmospheric Science, Chemistry, Geology, Hydrology, Oceanography, Physical Geography, Physics

    Social Sciences

    Hyperlink includes: Social Science, Anthropology, Cultural Geography, Economics, Ethnic Studies, Linguistics, Political Science, Psychology, Social Work, Sociology, Women's Studies

  • More Open Platforms

    University of Cape Town Libraries

    The platform has both open textbooks and open monographs

    American Institute of Mathematics

    The list below groups open textbooks by course title. All the books have been judged to meet the evaluation criteria set by the AIM(American Institute of Mathematics) editorial board.

    Bay College Library

    This links to Bay College OER Courses and Textbooks

    BC Campus OpenED

     

     

    Open textbooks in the B.C. Open Textbook Collection come in multiple formats. Many can be read online or delivered via PDF, EPUB (for most e-readers) and MOBI (for Kindle) format for free, or can be printed via our print-on-demand service for a nominal fee.

    Directory of Open Access Books

    This includes books from different websites and some of them are already added as individual websites. The link takes one to the names of databases not to the books

    IntechOpen

    This is a direct link to IntechOpen open books. A little difficult to navigate – use can consult with the librarian to access the books.

    Internet Archive eBooks and Texts

    Digital Library of Free & Borrowable Books. Copyrighted books can be loaned to anyone at any time for free.

    JSTOR

    More than 75 publishers, including Brill, Cornell University Press, De Gruyter, and University of California Press, have come together to make available textbooks at no cost to libraries or users.

    Maryland Open Source Textbook (M.O.S.T.) Commons

    The Maryland Open Source Textbook (M.O.S.T.) Commons is a collaborative, online space designed to support the sharing and creation of Open Educational Resources (OER). Through M.O.S.T. Commons, there is opportunity to access openly licensed content.

    Merlo Materials

    This is a direct link to the filtered section of open textbooks

    MIT Press Open Architecture and Urban Studies A robust digital collection of classic and previously out-of-print architecture and urban studies books, on the digital book platform, MIT Press Direct. The collection was funded by a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation as part of the Humanities Open Book Program, which they co-sponsored with the National Endowment for the Humanities.

    NOBA Traditional Texbooks

    NOBA states that traditional textbooks are open licensed but the website needs one to log in.

    NOUN e-Courseware, Nigeria

    These are open courses; the website was added since course materials may be relevant to others. Some curse materials freely accessible but not open licensed

    OASIS GENESEO-All resources

    This links to all resources and the links below are from this website

    OASIS GENESEO-Audio books

    These are Public Domain Audiobook

    OASIS GENESEO-Open Access books

    This is a link to open books

    OASIS GENESEO-Public Domain Books

    These are books in the Public Domain

    OASIS GENESEO-Texkbooks

    This is a direct link to the flitered section of open textbooks

    Open Research Library

    The Open Research Library is a hosting platform initiated and maintained by Knowledge Unlatched, aiming to bring together Open Access content in one platform. The hosting platform makes scientific book publications, and other high-quality academic OA content, freely available to anyone, anywhere in the world, ORL provides free access to a comprehensive collection of thousands of scholarly monographs, anthologies, journals, videos, posters and other formats. It caters to the core principle of OA—unobstructed access to academic materials with full interoperability of content data and metadata. Visit the Open Research Library

    PDF Drive

    PDF Drive is a search engine for PDF files. Currently, there are literally millions of eBooks which can be accessed and download for free.

    PhET Interactive Simulations

    These are simulations and one can read the description before downloading. One can easily choose by subject if you highlight Simulation of the top tabs.

    Project Gutenberg

     Free eBooks download them or read them online

    Textbook Revolution

    This links to Textbook Revolution booka by license

    The Library of Congress

    This collection is part of the Internet Archive and the books are digitised to be loaned for free.

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Scholarly Communications
Jill Claassen
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