OER, Open Access and Scholarship in Portuguese Higher Education

Abstract

The present paper is part of a PhD research, which is being developed in the scope of the Doctoral Programme in Education, specialisation in Distance Education and eLearning at Universidade Aberta, the Portuguese Open University. The theoretical framework for the research is Open Education, particularly the specific fields of Open Educational Resources (OER) and Open Access (OA). The main objective of the research is to identify and understand the awareness, knowledge and attitudes of scholars in Portuguese public Higher Education Institutions (HEI), regarding OER and OA and, in particular, to compare scholars’ awareness, attitudes and perceptions towards OER and OA in the context of their teaching and research practices. This will also allow us to represent the Portuguese reality and, consequently, position the Portuguese public higher education practices within the global panorama and also may be able to inform future decisions, whether institutionally, governmentally or even within a broader perspective. The current paper intends to present the research project and also to reflect the literature review carried out so far, in order to contextualise the research problem and also to describe the methodological procedures defined for the study.