"Open Educational Resources (OER) are teaching and learning materials that you may freely use and reuse at no cost, and without needing to ask permission.  Unlike copyrighted resources, OER have been authored or created by an individual or organization that chooses to retain few, if any, ownership rights." (from OER Commons)

Open access (OA) literature is digital, online, free of charge, and free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.

Suber, Peter. MIT Press Essential Knowledge : Open Access. Cambridge, MA, USA: MIT Press, 2012. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 4 February 2016.
Copyright © 2012. MIT Press. All rights reserved.

Students and other consumers of information benefit from OA, as they may access information that would otherwise be inaccessible to them due to cost, copyright, or the limitations journal subscriptions that academic institutions may hold.

Suber, Peter. MIT Press Essential Knowledge : Open Access. Cambridge, MA, USA: MIT Press, 2012. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 4 February 2016.
Copyright © 2012. MIT Press. All rights reserved.

Open Acccess can also help relieve the high cost of education by keeping the cost of educational materials low.

Open Access Network. About Open Access Network. N.p., 2016. Web. 4 Feb. 2016. <http://openaccessnetwork.org/about/>.

• OA removes pressure from researchers to publish only marketable research, allowing them more freedom.
• Authors can retain the copyright of their works, rather than giving them up to publishers.
• For various reasons, authors who publish in Open Access journals see an increased number of citations of their work.

Suber, Peter. MIT Press Essential Knowledge : Open Access. Cambridge, MA, USA: MIT Press, 2012. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 4 February 2016.