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Despite the perception of Open Educational Resources (OERs) as universally available, these involve barriers, such as the need for the presence of compatibility with existing educational frameworks (Mishra, 2017, p. 369). While OERs inherently promote Open Access to higher education, their deployment can be taking place in both closed and open education setups. A successful deployment of OERs, such as for improved teaching and learning outcomes, will likely require flexibility in terms of curriculum development (Mishra, 2017, p. 369). University libraries tend to be the education institution-level providers of OER-related services, such as hosting (Thompson, & Muir, 2020, p. 685). However, in many cases, OERs meet with low levels of awareness among teaching faculty, emphasis in organizational policies and institutional support. Additionally, the utilization of OERs faces barriers related to digital skills, copyright-related knowledge and human resources availability (Henderson, & Ostashewski, 2018). Thus, OERs require institutional commitment, educator incentives and support staff for their success (Mishra, 2017, p. 370). Additionally, the utilization of OERs faces barriers related to digital skills, copyright-related knowledge and human resources availability (Luo, Hostetler, Freeman, & Stefaniak, 2020, p. 140). Since OERs require institutional commitment, educator incentives and support staff, the successful implementation of OERs likely also demands significant investment in terms of time, funding, and human resources. Yet, minigrants, stipends, guidelines, checklists and awards may fail to replace the need for permanent funding that might be necessary for the ongoing development of OERs (McGowan, 2020. p. 24). Sponsorship projects for OER development may also become dispersed between academic libraries and teaching departments or university units, which can lead to fragmentary, intermittent practices. At the same time, OER will likely be, and has already been, making part of library responses to online learning transitions under the pandemic conditions (Mehta, & Wang, 2020, p. 351). Both students and instructors likely encounter multiple obstacles for successful online learning, which can be pedagogical, technical, and financial or organizational. Whereas some of these barriers can be addressed with the help of OERs, the success of the associated measures is not assured. Therefore, OERs can be one among other means for maintaining and improving education quality in online and offline settings (Lassoued, Alhendawi, & Bashitialshaaer, 2020, p. 1). In other words, the presence of institutional policies, adequate incentives and support frameworks for the use and sharing of OERs as well as raising awareness about their availability is likely to be critical regardless of the language setting internationally (Mishra, 2017, p. 369). Moreover, apart from Open Access to OERs, for local institutions the discoverability and sustainability of OERs are likely to affect their adoption. In terms of instructional or learner outcomes, the deployment of OERs can fail to produce a significant difference (Luo, Hostetler, Freeman, & Stefaniak, 2020, p. 140). Without adequate instructional design and compatible pedagogical strategies, the implementation of OERs can be challenging or lack in effectiveness in terms of their expected positive impacts. Thus, the potential of OERs can be context dependent (McGowan, 2020. p. 24).

open educational resources; open access; Copyright; teacher encouragement; institutional policy