Between Proclaimed Open Science and the Absence of Open Education: An Unresolved Agenda in Higher Education

Reflective essay written for Unit 5 (CC for Educators) of the Creative Commons Certificate for Educators (January–April 2026). This revised version (October 2026) refines the original wording, adds references to the institutional documents discussed, and includes a note on sources. The essay examines a gap in higher education: universities increasingly embrace open science, yet openness rarely extends to teaching. Drawing on the author's experience as a professor at a Mexican public university, it shows how institutional frameworks value the pedagogical quality of educational materials but make no provision for open licensing, reuse, or adaptation, so materials remain closed even when they are digital. Using the 5Rs of openness (retain, reuse, revise, remix, redistribute) as a framework, the essay argues that this mismatch renders open education and OER-based pedagogy invisible within institutional recognition mechanisms. It proposes a non-confrontational strategy at three levels (micro: teaching practice; meso: academic collaboration; macro: institutional advocacy) to expand existing quality frameworks so that they include open licensing, and to link open education to the institution's open science agenda. This essay is one of the materials from which the open educational resource El conocimiento en abierto: guía práctica sobre licencias Creative Commons (https://rosariorogel.net/cc-oer-mexico/) was later developed.