The Program on Information Justice and Intellectual Property at the American University Washington College of Law has released its Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Open Educational Resources. This document is intended to support authors, teachers, professors, librarians, and all open educators in evaluating when and how they can incorporate third party copyright materials into Open Educational Resources to meet their pedagogical goals.

Click here for the report's Cloud record and downloadable Code of Best Practices.

From June 2020 to February 2021, a consortium of 10 organisations undertook a large-scale study on open access journals across the world that are free for readers and authors, usually referred to as "OA diamond journals". This study was commissioned by cOAlition S in order to gain a better understanding of the OA diamond landscape.

The study undertook a statistical analysis of several bibliographic databases, surveyed 1,619 journals, collected 7,019 free text submissions and other data from 94 questions, and organised three focus groups with 11 journals and 10 interviews with hosting platforms. It collected 163 references in the academic literature, and inventoried 1048 journals not listed in DOAJ.

The key findings of the study are: a wide archipelago of relatively small journals is serving diverse communities; OA diamond journals are on the road to full compliance with Plan S; a mix of scientific strengths and operational challenges; and an economy that largely depends on volunteers, universities and government.

Click here for the study's Cloud record and downloadable Findings and Recommendations.

"Less than a decade after publishing its first free, openly licensed textbook, OpenStax - Rice University’s educational technology initiative - has saved students $1.2 billion.

"Driven by the belief that everyone should have access to knowledge, OpenStax has published 42 titles for college and high school courses across science, math, social sciences, business and the humanities disciplines since 2012.