No. 17 of 27 ·Open Educational Resource Platforms

OERSI

Web · Self-hosted · API

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Freedom report

One barScore 5.5

Free tierNo free tier on record
Open codeNo open-source code on record
Runs widely1 of 6 device platforms
DocumentedPlans, terms and facts published

OERSI is ranked #17 of 27 in open educational resource platforms on Freedom251. It runs on API, Self-hosted, Web.

Compared on open educational resource platforms

Open-license filter: Yes
Remix and adaptation: No
Authoring tools: No
Publishing workflow: No
API access: Yes
Content review: Yes

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The record

Purpose: OERSI is a search engine for open educational resources in higher education, provided jointly by hbz and TIB since 2020.
Metadata search: OERSI collects and standardizes metadata from distributed national and international providers to offer a central search with filters.
Does not host learning materials: OERSI does not store educational content; it harvests metadata from OER providers.
Who it serves: Resources considered for inclusion must be relevant to higher education teaching or learning, web-accessible, at least partly openly licensed, and accompanied by acceptable basic metadata.
Open API: OERSI provides a JSON-based Elasticsearch API for querying metadata and supports bulk access using point-in-time searches.
API usage guidance: API users are asked to send a meaningful, recurring User-Agent string with client and contact information where applicable.
Metadata formats accepted: OERSI accepts collection metadata as schema.org markup with a sitemap, JSON over HTTP, XML via OAI-PMH, structured HTML with a sitemap, or metadata dumps such as JSON and CSV.
Integrations: The about page names twillo and ORCA.nrw as platforms integrating OERSI search; it also lists reuse in BASE, finc, and library search interfaces.
Metadata standard: OERSI's internal metadata profile largely matches the General Metadata Profile for Educational Resources (AMB).
Open source: The OERSI code is available under the MIT licence, and the underlying reusable software is called SIDRE.
Deployment: The OERSI team says it uses Ansible scripts to install the service, and the SIDRE software is available for reuse.
Support and participation: The team invites feedback, bug reports, feature requests, and suggestions for connecting new OER providers through its contact form.
Notable API limit: Search requests must target the oer_data index; the FAQ warns that querying the generic search endpoint can return results from multiple indexes and cause duplicates.
Scale: In its fifth-anniversary post, OERSI reported indexing over 90,000 educational resources from 45 collections.

Where it ranks on Freedom251

Best Open Educational Resource Platforms in 2026#17 of 27

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Sources

oersi.org/pages/en/about/· checked 7 Oct 2026
oersi.org/pages/en/docs/add-resources/· checked 7 Oct 2026
oersi.org/pages/en/docs/add-resources/criteria/· checked 7 Oct 2026
oersi.org/pages/en/docs/integrate/metadata-search· checked 7 Oct 2026
oersi.org/pages/en/docs/add-resources/new-collect· checked 7 Oct 2026
oersi.org/pages/en/blog/2025/10/29/oersi-annivers· checked 7 Oct 2026
oersi.org/resources/pages/en/faq/· checked 7 Oct 2026
oersi.org/pages/en/docs/add-resources/single-reso· checked 7 Oct 2026
oersi.org· checked 28 Sept 2026