UNESCO's Open Access (OA) Curriculum

Published by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), this Open Access (OA) Curriculum is intended for researchers and library schools, and is designed to introduce concepts around open access and provide guidance on using open access knowledge, research, and publications. According to UNESCO, "The Philosophy of open access is to provide free of charge and unhindered access to research and its publications without copyright restrictions." This is important as "knowledge plays a key role in economic growth, social development, cultural enrichment and democratic empowerment."
UNESCO's Open Access programme works to address OA policy issues, bridge knowledge pools on OA across the world, and build capacities to better understand OA. This curriculum was developed for researchers and library and information professionals based on two needs assessment surveys and several rounds of face-to-face and online consultations with relevant stakeholders.
The complete set consists of five OA modules for researchers and four OA modules for library schools, which are broken down into the following curriculum modules: Curriculum for Library Schools:

• Module 1: Introduction to Open Access
• Module 2: Open Access Infrastructure
• Module 3: Resource Optimization
• Module 4: Interoperability and Retrieval

Curriculum for Researchers:

• Module 1: Scholarly Communications
• Module 2: Concepts of Openness and Open Access
• Module 3: Intellectual Property Rights
• Module 4: Research Evaluation Metrics
• Module 5: Sharing your Work in Open Access