Many materials are available free of cost online. However, being free of cost does not necessarily mean something is an OER. For something to be considered an OER it needs to be freely and legally allowed to be redistributed and shared.
An easy way to evaluate if something is an OER is to determine the copyright status of an item. Is it in the public domain, does it have a creative commons (cc) license or does it have a free software license (e.g., GNU license, MIT license)? If the material does not fall into one of these categories, it probably is not an OER.
Note: Qualification as an OER is not based on technical ability (e.g., editing a document), but rather on legal ability and permission to use, re-use and remix.
