Welcome to this guide on Open Access Resources for Veterinary Science. Please contact the Veterinary science information specialists (listed on the left) should you have any queries, or should you want to add other useful references.
Take note that conditions or certain licences, e.g. Creative Commons, may apply to some of these resources. It is good practice to check the Conditions of Use if you are using the material beyond the provisions of 'Fair Dealing' in the SA Copyright Act. Some may be entirely free to use and reproduce, whilst others may have some conditions related to the re-use or reproduction of works.
To read more about topics such as scholarly publishing, avoiding questionable publishing practices, open access, open educational resources, access to knowledge, copyright and related matters in the free online Scholarly Horizons eBulletin. The bulletin is managed by Denise Rosemary Nicholson, an internationally recognised specialist librarian in copyright, open access, scholarly communications and related issues.
Images on this Libguide are from Unsplash - The internet’s source of freely-usable images.
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Open access (OA) is a set of principles and a range of practices through which research outputs are distributed online, free of cost or other access barriers (Wikipedia) View video : What is Open Access? Open educational resources (OER) are freely accessible, openly licensed text, media, and other digital assets that are useful for teaching, learning, and assessing as well as for research purposes. The term OER describes publicly accessible materials and resources for any user to use, re-mix, improve and redistribute under some licenses. (Wikipedia) View video : An Introduction to Open Educational Resources View video : Turning a Resource into an Open Educational Resource |
Creative Commons (CC) is an American non-profit organization and international network devoted to educational access and expanding the range of creative works available for others to build upon legally and to share.[3] The organization has released several copyright-licenses, known as Creative Commons licenses, free of charge to the public. These licenses allow authors of creative works to communicate which rights they reserve and which rights they waive for the benefit of recipients or other creators. An easy-to-understand one-page explanation of rights, with associated visual symbols, explains the specifics of each Creative Commons license. Creative Commons licenses do not replace copyright, but are based upon it. They replace individual negotiations for specific rights between copyright owner (licensor) and licensee, which are necessary under an "all rights reserved" copyright management, with a "some rights reserved" management employing standardized licenses for re-use cases where no commercial compensation is sought by the copyright owner. The result is an agile, low-overhead, and low-cost copyright-management regime, benefiting both copyright owners and licensees.(Source: Wikipedia)
The range of licences from the most open to the most restricted.
Image Credit: Dr Cable Green
