Open Access (OA) and Open Educational Resources (OER) make scholarship and teaching materials in education freely available to read, reuse and adapt — a powerful equaliser for African researchers, students and librarians. This guide curates the best free, legal resources across curriculum, pedagogy, educational psychology, technology and higher education.
Subdisciplines — jump in
- Curriculum & Pedagogy — search FRELIP, then build skills in the Education OER course
- Educational Psychology — search FRELIP, then build skills in the Education OER course
- Educational Technology — search FRELIP, then build skills in the Education OER course
- Higher & Adult Education — search FRELIP, then build skills in the Education OER course
New here? start with these courses
- FRELIP Education OER Course (this subject's open course)
- Navigating Research Guides (how to use guides like this one)
- Accessing Open Access Journals (find and read OA scholarship)
- Using VuFind Discovery Search (master the FRELIP search engine)
Search everything
Use the unified FRELIP Discovery Search to search across journals, books, theses and feeds in one place.
Start here for definitions, terminology and authoritative overviews of education concepts.
General education reference
- Wikipedia Education Portal (free encyclopedia gateway to education topics)
- Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Philosophy of Education (peer-reviewed scholarly entry)
- ERIC Thesaurus (controlled vocabulary of education terminology)
- UNESCO Institute for Statistics Glossary (international education terms and indicators)
Curriculum & Pedagogy
- OER Commons Teaching Commons (pedagogy concepts and teaching strategies)
- IBE-UNESCO Glossary of Curriculum Terminology (definitive curriculum vocabulary)
Educational Psychology
- Noba Project Psychology (free, expert-written psychology modules incl. learning & development)
- APA Dictionary of Psychology (free authoritative psychology definitions)
Higher & Adult Education
- UNESCO Higher Education (concepts, reports and terminology)
Free, openly licensed books and textbooks you can read, download and adapt.
OA book platforms
- Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB) (browse education subject)
- OAPEN Library (peer-reviewed OA books — search education)
- Project Gutenberg: Education (public-domain classic education texts)
- Internet Archive: Education Texts (vast digitised collection)
Open textbooks
- Open Textbook Library: Education (vetted, openly licensed textbooks)
- OER Commons: Education (open courseware and textbooks)
- OpenStax (free peer-reviewed textbooks incl. Psychology)
- LibreTexts: Education & Professional Development (open education bookshelf)
Educational Psychology
- OpenStax Psychology 2e (free foundational psychology textbook)
- Educational Psychology (Seifert & Sutton) (open textbook)
Peer-reviewed open-access journals and article repositories across education.
General OA journals & finders
- DOAJ: Education journals (Directory of Open Access Journals)
- ERIC (Education Resources Information Center — index with many free full texts)
- Taylor & Francis Open (OA education titles)
Curriculum & Pedagogy
- DOAJ: Curriculum & Pedagogy journals
- African Journals OnLine (AJOL): Education (African scholarship)
Educational Psychology
- DOAJ: Educational Psychology journals
- PsyArXiv (psychology preprint server)
Educational Technology
- DOAJ: Educational Technology journals
- IRRODL (Intl. Review of Research in Open & Distributed Learning — fully OA)
Higher & Adult Education
- DOAJ: Higher Education journals
- South African Journal of Higher Education (African higher-ed scholarship)
Discovery tools and bibliographic indexes for finding education research at scale.
Discovery & bibliographic
- BASE (Bielefeld Academic Search Engine — search education)
- CORE (world's largest OA full-text aggregator)
- OpenAIRE Explore (European OA research graph)
- OpenAlex (open index of scholarly works)
- Semantic Scholar (AI-powered literature search)
- The Lens (scholarly & patent search)
Citation indexes
- OpenCitations (open citation data)
- Dimensions (free publication & citation search)
Subject-specific
- ERIC (premier education bibliographic database)
- UNESCO UIS Data (global education statistics & indicators)
- FRELIP Discovery: Education (search the FRELIP collection)
Open data repositories and education statistics for evidence-based research.
General data repositories
- Zenodo (CERN-backed open data & software — search education)
- Dryad (curated research data)
- Figshare (data, figures and supplements)
- OSF (Open Science Framework) (projects, data & preprints)
- re3data (registry of research data repositories)
Education statistics & primary sources
- UNESCO UIS Data Browser (international education indicators)
- World Bank EdStats (global education statistics)
- UNICEF Education Data (child & youth education data)
- OECD Education Data & PISA (international assessments)
- World Bank Microdata: Education (survey datasets incl. many African countries)
Open images, video lectures, courseware and interactive resources for teaching and learning.
Images
- Wikimedia Commons: Education (freely reusable images & media)
- Openverse (search openly licensed images & audio)
Video & courseware
- MIT OpenCourseWare (free MIT course materials)
- Khan Academy (free lessons across subjects)
- Open Yale Courses: Psychology (full recorded lecture courses)
- TED-Ed (free educational video lessons)
- MERLOT (curated multimedia learning materials)
Simulations & interactive
- PhET Interactive Simulations (free science & maths sims for teaching)
- OER Commons Interactives (open interactive learning objects)
Free tools to manage references, find full text and identify yourself as a researcher.
Reference managers
- Zotero (free, open-source reference manager)
- JabRef (open-source BibTeX manager)
- ZoteroBib (instant bibliographies, no install)
Identity & impact
- ORCID (persistent unique researcher identifier)
Find full text
- Unpaywall (browser extension to find legal OA copies)
- CORE Discovery (one-click access to OA full texts)
Writing & analysis
Understand open licences, OA policies and accessibility standards for sharing education research and teaching materials.
Creative Commons & licensing
- Creative Commons Licences (the standard open licences explained)
- CC Licence Chooser (pick the right licence for your work)
Repository & self-archiving policies
- Sherpa Romeo (publisher OA & self-archiving policies)
- OpenDOAR (directory of OA repositories)
- ROAR (Registry of Open Access Repositories)
OA & assessment policy
- Plan S / cOAlition S (funder OA mandate)
- DORA (Declaration on Research Assessment)
Metadata & accessibility
- Dublin Core Metadata (standard descriptive metadata)
- WCAG Accessibility Guidelines (make resources accessible to all learners)
Connect with the global and African education research community, and keep building your skills.
Learned societies & associations
- American Educational Research Association (AERA) (leading global education research body)
- British Educational Research Association (BERA) (UK research association)
- European Educational Research Association (EERA)
- Association for the Development of Education in Africa (ADEA) (pan-African education forum)
- Association of African Universities (AAU) (African higher-education network)
Keep learning (FRELIP Moodle)
- Education OER Course (this subject's open course)
- Evaluating Information Sources (judge quality & credibility)
- The Research Impact Track (grow your scholarly impact)
Need help?
- FRELIP Discovery Search (find resources)
- FRELIP Learning (all open courses)
- Email a librarian: info@frelip.org