UNESCO has released its Dubai Declaration on Open Educational Resources: Digital Public Goods and Emerging Technologies for Equitable and Inclusive Access to Knowledge. from the 3rd World Open Educational Resources Congress held in Dubai, 2024. The Declaration's recommendations are:

Emerging technologies, including AI, provide opportunities to advance the 2019 Recommendation. Beyond the creation of new openly licensed content, potential applications include: facilitating the detection of existing openly licensed content online; developing techniques for effective OER curation; translating OER into multiple languages; and facilitating content indexing through the recommendation of descriptive metadata. Other emerging technologies, such as decentralized and secure digital ledger systems, could potentially ensure the provenance, integrity and lawful use of OER.

Legal frameworks are not up to date with technological advancements such as these. In the realm of intellectual property rights (IPR), the key to OER, this can lead to ambiguities on what constitutes legal use as well as issues regarding how exceptions and limitations to copyright law may be used even when a work is not openly licensed. Developing clear guidelines and policies that address these issues can help protect the rights of content creators, ensure proper attribution and create innovative technology spaces for the public good.

The Global Digital Compact and UNESCO’s ROAM-X principles, which are rights-based, open, accessible and promote multi-stakeholder participation based on cross-cutting principles, in particular gender equity, can inform policies for OER by providing a comprehensive framework that ensures inclusivity, equity and collaboration in the development and implementation of open educational resources.

These frameworks and principles, alongside the 2019 Recommendation, provide a robust foundation for developing OER. The stakeholders addressed in this document are those in the 2019 Recommendation 4. With regard to generative AI, it is important to underscore that these recommendations apply both to the inputs and outputs of large language models (LLMs). Furthermore, the principle of human-centred use of technology prevails in all recommendations. The principles of transparency and knowledge-sharing are fundamental for the implementation of these recommendations. The guidelines below aim to provide actions to harness the opportunities posed by emerging technologies, such as AI, for expanding knowledge-sharing and creation through the implementation of the 2019 Recommendation.

Download the full Declaration here

March 30, 2026

AEGIS-OA (Activate European Guidance and Incentives for Sustainable Open Access publishing) launched 19-20 March 2026 as a consortium of research organisations, service providers, and National Capacity Centres aiming "to strengthen a transparent, sustainable, and high-quality open access scholarly publishing ecosystem in Europe." Its goal is to build upon the services of the European Diamond Capacity Hub (EDCH), enhancing its discovery tools and service infrastructures, as well as broadening the scope of Diamond Open Access to include monographs and edited volumes. For more information, review their press release below or visit the European Diamond Capacity Hub . ...

March 23, 2026

As a contribution to the "Sharing is a Challenge" series for OEWeek 2026 from the Unitwin Network on Open Education, the web article, Who Owns AI-Generated Content? by Rory McGreal, UNESCO/ICDE Chair in Open Educational Resources, addresses two "paralyzing concerns" regarding the use of AI-generated learning materials: the paralysis of legal uncertainty, and the crisis of trust in shared content. "This article confronts these intertwined problems directly. We move beyond generic advice to address the specific apprehensions that hinder creators. Our goal is to demystify the legal landscape, provide current information on using shared material, and rebuild the confidence needed to engage with the digital commons—not recklessly, but with informed and empowered knowledge. "Presently, a clear legal trend is emerging that strongly supports openness in education. The evolving copyright landscape for GenAI, characterized by the denial of protection for purely AI-generated works, aligns with fair use/dealing doctrines and statutory exceptions for education. This creates a novel and powerful foundation for a new class of fully accessible Open Educational Resources (OER), democratizing content creation and freeing it from traditional copyright restrictions." ...

January 10, 2026

In December 2025, Te Pūkenga (New Zealand Institute of Skills and Technology), the sole shareholder of the Open Education Resource Foundation (OERF), made the decision to disestablish the non-profit and end its services. The roles of the New Zealand UNESCO Chair in Open Educational Resources and the Open Source Technologist supporting Open Education at Otago Polytechnic were terminated. Wayne Mackintosh describes in a detailed blog post how poor stewardship and neglect forced the self-funding OERF, responsible for several successful and award-winning initiatives including WikiEducator and the OERu, into technical insolvency. "The actions taken by the shareholder resulted in the Foundation no longer being able to continue operating as a self-funded entity, notwithstanding that it had done so for 14 years." As a result, its services, including the open online courses hosted by the OERF, are expected to wind down by mid-2026, breaking long-standing commitments to the UNESCO OER Recommendation. In a related post, Paul Bacsich provides a conversation with ChatGPT about the factors leading to the closure of the OERF ...

October 23, 2025

Maryam Sayab, Director of Communications at the Asian Council of Science Editors (ACSE), has written a blog post on the promises and pitfalls of publishing as a Diamond OA journal, launching a critical conversation for Open Access Week. She argues that: "... the scholarly community risks embracing a 'utopian ideal' of free publishing without grappling with the structural realities that make it viable.... The result is a paradox: in regions where the promise of diamond OA is most urgently needed to break down paywalls and amplify underrepresented scholarship, the conditions for sustaining it are least available." She asks, "... not how many journals are diamond, but how many can endure, and what we, as a global community, are willing to do to ensure they do." Sayab's full blog post and accompanying discussion are available here . International Open Access Week, Who Owns Our Knowledge, runs from October 20 to 26, 2025. ...

August 28, 2025

The Government of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam has issued a Decree on the development, use, and management of Open Educational Resources (OER) in higher education in Vietnam. An unofficial English translation (for academic and reference purposes only) is now available on the OER Knowledge Cloud. From Article 1: This Decree regulates the development, evaluation, publication, sharing, use, and management of Open Educational Resources (OER) in higher education in Vietnam. It establishes policies, mechanisms, and technical standards to ensure the quality of materials, openness, fair and long-term access, and effective use across the higher education system. ...