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While it may be a worthy, if somewhat idealistic aspiration to make all educational content available free of charge, in-principle decisions to exclude commercial content from consideration in teaching and learning environments are likely to be inappropriate. Such a stance ignores the reality that there are many high quality educational materials available for purchase and that, in certain circumstances, their use may be more affordable than attempts to produce that content openly. Thus, the most cost-effective way to develop and procure resources for use in teaching and learning is to explore all available options, rather than excluding some on principle.

OER and commercial content can thus be used together in courses and programmes, although course developers need to be careful not to create licensing conflicts by integrating materials with different licensing conditions when designing teaching and learning materials. It thus seems a worthwhile practice, however, during design and development of educational courses and programmes, to consider all possibilities when developing and procuring content. Of course, as a consequence of digitization of content and the growth of openly available content online, educational publishing business models will shift and the mix of open content and commercial content will continue to change.

To be effective and sustainable, institutional decisions to harness OER will likely need to be accompanied by review of policies. There are at least four main policy issues:
 * 1) Provision in policy of clarity on IPR and copyright on works created during the course of employment (or study) and how these may be shared with and used by others.
 * 2) Human resource policy guidelines regarding whether or not the creation of certain kinds of work (e.g. learning resources) constitutes part of the job description for staff and what the implications are for development, performance management, remuneration, and promotion purposes.
 * 3) ICT policy guidelines regarding access to and use of appropriate software, hardware, the Internet and technical support, as well as provision for version control and back-up of any storage systems for an institution’s educational resources.