UNESCO has identified OER as helping to meet 6 of their

2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development of the United Nations:

Adoption Guide: A reference for instructors, institutions, and students on adopting open textbooks by BC Campus. The second edition is an updated and expanded version of the original adoption guide. The first sections address three distinct groups involved in open textbook adoption: instructors, post-secondary institutions, and students. The second--most comprehensive--section focuses on the operational aspects of adoption: surveying instructors about, tracking usage of, and reporting out about open textbooks (and other OER). The last "Learn More" part provides additional adoption information.

OER Student Toolkit: For students, the high cost of educational resources and textbooks can be a serious obstacle to the accessibility and affordability of a post-secondary education. For instructors, traditional educational resources may also present a barrier to innovation in teaching and curriculum design. Fortunately, open educational resources (OER) provide a viable solution to both these issues. OER can be accessed for free online or printed at a fraction of the cost of a traditional textbook, and can be edited to better fit the curricular or pedagogical goals of an instructor.

Toward Convergence: Creating Clarity to Drive More Consistency in Understanding the Benefits and Costs of OER

Report developed by the Midwestern Higher Education Compact (MHEC), as part of the National Consortium for OER (NCOER), and by a workgroup of institutional, state, and national leaders to offer common principles and frameworks to improve consistency and reliability for measuring cost savings and the return on investment (ROI) of OER.

Use of Free Textbooks Is Rising, but Barriers Remain 

December 2017 article from the Chronicle of Higher Education presents the results of a survey of 2,700 faculty members on use and attitudes toward OERs. Presents a good overview of why faculty are choosing to use OERs and barriers preventing broader use.

Open Educational Resources Mythbusting

The Open Educational Resources movement was conceived as a way to transform and democratize access to education. The movement is less then ten years old, but it has already matured to a point at which govern- ments, companies – and, most importantly, teachers and learners around the world – are creating OERs and  using them in countless ways.

"An old tradition and a new technology have converged to make possible an unprecedented public good. The old tradition is the willingness of scientists and scholars to publish the fruits of their research in scholarly journals without payment, for the sake of inquiry and knowledge. The new technology is the internet. The public good they make possible is the world-wide electronic distribution of the peer-reviewed journal literature and completely free and unrestricted access to it by all scientists, scholars, teachers, students, and other curious minds. Removing access barriers to this literature will accelerate research, enrich education, share the learning of the rich with the poor and the poor with the rich, make this literature as useful as it can be, and lay the foundation for uniting humanity in a common intellectual conversation and quest for knowledge." —From the Budapest Open Access Initiative

Open Education in Promotion, Tenure, and Faculty Development: This resource was developed by a working group from the Iowa Open Education Action Team (Iowa OER). Our team built upon DOERS3's OER in Tenure & Promotion Matrix to help faculty and staff advocate for the inclusion of open educational practices (OEP) in promotion, tenure, and faculty evaluation practices at their institutions.