To accelerate scientific progress by advancing the spread of open access and free and open source software and hardware in academia, this study surveyed university professors in Canada to determine their willingness accept "open source (OS) endowed chair professorships." To obtain such an "open source endowed chair," in…

Researchers at UiT--The Arctic University of Norway--studied how agreeableness and conscientiousness influence trust and perceived quality and how these factors subsequently impact the intention to publish research articles via open access (OA) or non-OA channels. The main findings show that, while trust increases intention to publish via OA, it…

Providing financial incentives to faculty who adopt free educational resources in place of traditional textbooks is becoming more common in U.S. higher education institutions. The University of Mississippi (UM) offered liberal arts instructors the opportunity to apply for internal funding to replace one traditional textbook in their classroom with…

As public funding for higher education decreases and the cost to students to attend college increases, universities are searching for strategies that save students money while also increasing their chances for success. Using free online textbooks is one such strategy, and the OpenStax College initiative at Rice University is one of the most widely…

Higher education in Tanzania like in many other Sub-Saharan countries suffers from unavailability of quality teaching and learning resources due to lack of tradition, competence, and experience to develop such resources. Nevertheless, there are thousands of open educational resources (OER) freely available in the public domain that can potentially…