free resource, saving students or schools money on purchasing these. MOOCs and OERs themselves provide opportunities for the leisure learner to satisfy a learning need without any financial investment, although they may then desire to go further in to study.
These three areas of social relevance, graduate suitability and financial cost are all recurring themes for universities. Openness is not the only solution to them, but it is one that is relatively easy to adopt and could address them without resorting to the wholesale revolution approach that is often called for.
The Price of Openness
In Chapter 1, the analogy with greenwashing was made, with openwashing demonstrating that the label ‘open’ has acquired a certain market value and is worth proclaiming. While I would resist a dogmatic approach to allowing the use of the term, what this suggests is that one response to the use of openness is not to allow the use of the term lightly. If ‘openness’ has a market value, then we should demand of those who use it for their benefit some adherence to general principles of openness–for example, that their content is openly licensed.
One such example that is often encountered is the number of research articles that address open education in some form but which aren’t published under an open access licence. It is ironic to say the least to encounter an article about the benefits of OERs and be asked to pay US$40 to access it.
As was outlined in Chapter 3, increasingly there is a shift to make all articles open access anyway, but for any research in the field of open education (MOOCs, OA, OER, open data, etc.), it is reasonable to expect that the resultant publications are open access. As soon as a researcher commences in this area they are,
