"Iowa"by ChrisYunker is licensed under CC BY 2.0
There are many definitions of OER, but the University of Iowa has adopted the following, which includes two main components: OER must be free of cost and openly licensed.
"Open Educational Resources (OER) are teaching, learning, and research resources that are free of cost and access barriers, and which also carry legal permission for open use. Generally, this permission is granted by use of an open license (for example, Creative Commons licenses)"
The terms "open content" and "open educational resources" describe any copyrightable work (traditionally excluding software, which is described by other terms like "open source") that is either (1) in the public domain or (2) licensed in a manner that provides users with free and perpetual permission to engage in the 5R activities.