OER are diverse materials for teaching and learning that are either in the public domain or published under an open license. These open licenses allow third parties to use, adapt, and distribute these resources freely, often with little or no restrictions. The creators determine which rights of use they grant and which rights they reserve. OER encompass a wide range of content, including textbooks, curricula, lesson plans, scripts, assignments, tests, projects, as well as audio, video, and animation formats.

Switch OER features open educational materials (OER) from participating Swiss universities.

Users are permitted to upload OER in all languages, across all subject areas, and in a wide variety of file formats. However, the platform does not host scientific open access publications, open source code, or open research data.

Switch OER exclusively features OER from members of Swiss universities.

The collection offers several advantages:

• Targeted search capabilities tailored for university teaching materials.
• Quality assurance: Only employees of participating Swiss universities are authorised to publish materials.
• Student-contributed materials undergo a review by responsible teaching staff before release.
• Editorial oversight of OER by dedicated managers at participating universities.
• Comprehensive resource descriptions facilitate targeted search and selection of relevant OER.
• Materials are clearly referenced with DOI (Digital Object Identifier).
• The search interface and backend are available in English, German, and French, with Italian translation currently in progress.

In Switch OER, each resource clearly indicates how a material can be reused. Creative Commons licences have established themselves as the global standard for this purpose.

	CC0 / Public Domain No obligation to give attribution Allowed: Modification, commercial use
	CC BY 4.0 Requirement: Attribution Allowed: Modification, commercial use
	CC BY-SA 4.0  (Share Alike) Requirement: Attribution, making adaptations available online under the same licence (CC BY-SA) Allowed: Modification, commercial use
	CC BY-NC 4.0 (Non Commercial) Requirement: Attribution, no use for commercial purposes Permitted: Modification
	CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 Requirement: Attribution, no use for commercial purposes, making adaptations available online under the same licence (CC BY-NC-SA) Permitted: Modification
	CC BY-ND 4.0 (No Derivatives) Requirement: Attribution, no modification Permitted: Commercial use
	CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 Requirement: Attribution, no modification, no use for commercial purposes

Please also note the special provision of Swiss copyright law for the use of materials in the classroom (CCdigitallaw.ch: "Private use for educational purposes").

Login is only required for uploading and publishing materials. It is not necessary to log in order to search for, download or use OER.

Searching, downloading, and using the materials on Switch OER are free of charge.

The costs of operating the platform are covered by the participating universities, which are committed to the idea of making high-quality education generally accessible at no cost and creating synergies in the digital transformation of university teaching. These include: