1 Introduction

Developing inclusive knowledge societies with lifelong learning systems requires addressing their interaction needs with open information. To understand that knowledge societies harnesses the influential synergy between knowledge and Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs), ushering in profound transformations within economies and societies. In this sense Engida (2016) points out that knowledge societies embody social systems where individuals possess the ability not merely to gather information, but also to convert it into knowledge and comprehension. This empowerment equips them to elevate their quality of life and actively contribute to the social and economic progress of their communities. Building on this, Open Scholarship is the practice of applying openness to academia, encompassing free access to research, transparent methods, and collaborative tools, which aims to make education more equitable, affordable, and inclusive, thereby enhancing the potential for individuals to transform information into actionable knowledge and contribute even more effectively to their communities (The University of British Colombia, 2023). According to UNESCO’s recommendation on Open Educational Resources (OER) (UNESCO, 2019, p. 1), quality education can be encouraged by four actions, including “building the capacity of stakeholders to create, access, reuse, adapt and redistribute Open Educational Resources.“ Earlier, Abeywardena (2012) remarked that the philosophy of OERs rests on such a scope splitting it into “(i) free and open access to knowledge; and (ii) the ability to freely adapt and reuse existing pieces of knowledge,“ the latter being the most challenging for large-scale adoption given the technological constraints when empowering communities to expand the concept. Thus, the adaptation, reuse, and redistribution of OER require practical application by students to achieve permanence and expansion in various educational settings (Otto, 2019). Baas and Schuwer (2020) emphasized that the resources that require the most dedication to create are reused from existing OER platforms without being adapted. Conversely, the teachers usually develop resources that need thematic contextualization.

Regarding students’ perceived benefits of using OER, gains have been found in academically challenging subjects, particularly those developing critical and analytical thinking (Shams et al., 2020), and several examples of OER in the curriculum have resulted in student engagement as they acquire skills and competencies while remixing and repurposing resources (Campbell, 2022). However, there are still considerable hurdles in using the platforms and web spaces providing OER, whose technological characteristics, dissemination, and capacity for community involvement, among other aspects, appear inadequate (Risquez et al., 2020), which adds to the students’ shortage of digital literacy skills. Thus, to capitalize on the extensive availability of OER, one should know the guidelines for their reuse and the impact on learners and technological possibilities.

With this background, this work focused on characterizing OER platforms that address complex thinking and feature reusable, adaptable, and redistributable functions. The researchers considered UNESCO’s recommendation on OER and current definitions of complex thinking to review existing platforms. The theoretical framework covers existing OER resources linked to developing complex thinking, the supply of OER platforms, and how such OER are reused, adapted, and redistributed. As a result, selected OER have the characteristics that might benefit research to improve existing platforms and envision future developments.

1.1 Open resources and practices for developing complex thinking

Twenty-first-century society requires educational models that enable citizens to question behaviors and develop attitudes to face unexpected problems. Morin (1994) coined the notion of complex thinking and referred to the capacity of thought to pursue multidimensional knowledge, which integrates the simplifying modes of cognition and rejects reductionist, unidimensional and blinding consequences. According to Lipman (1998), complex thinking is higher-order thinking that emerges from the fusion of critical and creative thinking, where metacognition plays a key role. Silva and Iturra (2021) emphasize the definition of metacognition as the capacity of knowledge that a subject has for learning, abilities, and using cognition, as well as strengths and weaknesses. Another 21st-century competency is computational thinking, which encompasses a suite of skills such as recursive reasoning, vigilance in risk prevention, detection, and mitigation, as well as the strategic use of abstraction and decomposition for managing complex tasks. Within this domain, heuristic reasoning, iterative processes, and search algorithms are leveraged to identify solutions to multifaceted problems (Guzdial, 2012). Expanding on this conceptual framework, Tobón and Luna-Nemecio (2021) advocate for the incorporation of socio-formative actions (Prado, 2018) to enrich complex thinking paradigms. This enriched approach aims to equip students with a comprehensive set of skills that are crucial for addressing contemporary challenges in social and sustainable development, including but not limited to problem-solving, creativity, critical thinking, systemic analysis, and metacognition. To achieve this synthesis of holistic competencies, especially in contexts that integrate technological tools, González-Pérez and Ramírez-Montoya (2022) emphasize the imperative for the judicious application of teaching-learning strategies.

Higher education institutions must adopt a culture of innovation and information to develop students’ complex thinking skills to face the challenges of an uncertain and changing world. In the digital transformation era, it is necessary to adapt this knowledge to support education for Industry 4.0. Ramírez-Montoya et al. (2022) contributed the definition of complex thinking as an emerging area in the framework of Education 4.0 that triggers the four sub-competencies of critical, systemic, innovative, and creative thinking. Critical thinking can be defined as an individual thought process that begins with the intent to solve a problem or answer a question by examining different options and choosing the most suitable and logical one (Alsaleh, 2020). Innovative thinking is the capacity for creativity, implemented with a high degree of success; four levels of innovation are delineated: incremental, modular, architectural, and radical (Passig & Cohen, 2014). Scientific thinking involves intentional information seeking, including asking questions, testing hypotheses, making observations, recognizing patterns, and making inferences (Kuhn, 2010). Systemic thinking uses methodological tools to manage emerging complexity in local and global contexts (Barile et al., 2018). The characteristics of current educational models should be considered in light of their impact on the acquisition of knowledge and skills and the dimensions of character and meta-learning (Fadel et al., 2015). Also, higher education institutions must provide workspaces and digital libraries as a core part of teaching activities to promote the production, creation, curation, and reuse of educational materials supported by various technologies (Rayna & Striukova, 2021). Thus, creating technological frameworks and bases for students to develop informational, digital, and complex thinking skills within the open-access paradigm to share and reuse quality content on platforms, repositories, digital libraries, and other digital spaces is essential.

1.2 Open Educational Resources (OER): Reuse and remix

Open Educational Resources (OER) is one of the frameworks that foster the development of competencies and skills to face the challenges of the 21st century. UNESCO’s 2002 Forum on Open Courseware first coined OER, described as educational content in any format, either digital or otherwise, that is either in the public domain or available under a license allowing free access, modification, and distribution with minimal or no constraints (Tlili et al., 2019). For Wiley (n.d.) the terms “open content” and “open educational resources” describe any copyrightable work (traditionally excluding software, usually described as “open source”) that is either (1) in the public domain or (2) licensed in a manner that provides everyone with free and perpetual permission to engage in the 5R activities, namely Retain, Revise, Remix, Reuse, and Redistribute, described as follows: Retain is the activity of creating, possessing, and managing an original of the material (for example, downloading and storing a personalized duplicate). Revise means to change, alter, and adjust the original version of the resource (for example, editing the material into a different language). Remix is merging the original or modified version of the resource with additional materials to generate a novel item (for example, construct a mix). Reuse is to utilize the initial, altered, or remixed version of the material openly (for example, on the internet, in daily presentations, or in a lecture). Finally, Redistribute means to distribute copies of the initial, edited, or remixed version of the original material openly (for example, publishing the file on the internet or sending one to an individual).

Although OER should have a license that allows using the resource in a completely open manner, some OER have licenses that condition their use or reuse, which can make them less open. In this sense, Creative Commons (CC) licenses can provide a simple and standardized way to grant legal permissions for creative works and specifically indicate whether the content can be copied, distributed, edited, or remixed under the limits of intellectual property law. There are several combinations (Creative Commons, 2020). The following is a description of combined creative commons licenses: (1) Attribution (CC BY): Anyone can distribute, remix, modify, and develop your work, even for profit, under the terms of the Attribution (CC BY) license. The most adaptive license is (2) Attribution-No Derivative Works (CC BY-ND), enabling anyone to use the work in any way, even for financial gain; however, one cannot distribute it in an altered form. Also, the original author must be cited; (3) Attribution - Share Alike (CC BY-SA) allows others to remix, adapt, and elaborate the work, regardless of profit, as long as they give the authors credit and distribute their new creations under the same license conditions. This type of license frequently contrasts with “copyleft” open-source and free software licenses; (4) Attribution - Non-Commercial (CC BY-NC) allow non-commercial remixing, adaptation, and development of the work. While the authors must also credit you and be non-commercial in their new works, they are not required to grant the same license to their derivative works; (5) Attribution - Non-Commercial - Share Alike (CC BY-NC-SA) permits non-commercial remixing, adaptation, and development of your work as long as you are credited, and your new works are licensed similarly to the original; and (6) Attribution - Non-Commercial - No Derivative Works (CC BY-NC-ND), perhaps the most stringent of the six main licenses, only permits downloading and sharing of the works with other people when the creator’s identity is acknowledged. But these cannot be altered or applied for financial gain.

Selecting the condition “no derivative works (ND)” eliminates the possibility of making an adaptation, remix, or reusing with a remix. UNESCO’s Recommendation on Open Educational Resources (OER) (UNESCO, 2019) highlights the development of supportive policies that promote research in this field, the establishment of expert networks and the publication of accessible OER using standard formats in public repositories and promoting practical, inclusive and equitable access to quality OER through the development, adaptation, and redistribution of quality OER with principles of inclusiveness and accessibility, gender equality and attention to vulnerable learners.

To analyze whether an OER can be reusable in academic, social, or cultural contexts, one must first identify its type of licensing and the intellectual property permissions it grants and assess whether its technical formats allow its adaptation. ALMS Framework (Access, Level, Meaningfully Editable, Self-Sourced) by Wiley (n.d.) provides a way of thinking about those technical choices and understanding the degree to which they enable or impede a user’s ability to engage in the 5R activities permitted by open licenses (Fig. 1).

Fig. 1
figure 1

ALMS framework (access, level, meaningfully editable, self-sourced) by Wiley (n.d.)

Full size image

Indeed, open platforms must provide users with open education activities with functionalities that allow them to manipulate information adequately. Therefore they must be created based on sustainable standards and principles that enable interoperability in the long term.

1.3 Open education and open scholarship

Various ways of defining the activities involved in open access have emerged. For Parsons et al. (2022), the definition of “Open scholarship” is often used synonymously with “Open science” but extends to all disciplines, drawing in those that might not traditionally identify as science-based. For instance, Wiley and Hilton (2018) describe open pedagogy as a collection of educational approaches that are only feasible due to the unique advantages provided by open educational resources, as facilitated by the “5Rs.“; they also offer guidelines to evaluate if a teaching method qualifies as OER-enabled pedagogy. Ehlers (2011) defines Open Educational Practices (OEP) as combining OER and open learning architectures so universities, adult learners, and citizens can shape their lifelong learning pathways autonomously and self-directed. Christiansen and McNally (2022) created a framework that describes each factor of open education in three dimensions of openness: closed, mixed, and most open, and they coded the sampled OpenCourseWare (OCW). This represents the need to create an open pedagogical architecture linked to a series of reusable OER pedagogical practices that can foster the development of complex thinking skills from evaluating levels of complexity.

The process for teachers and students to adopt OER effectively involves several phases. In the first phases, they must learn the fundamental concepts of the OER. Openness in teaching and learning practices has the value principle that knowledge should be shared freely, openly, and equitably. It means that knowledge, as a common good, should be accessible and usable by everyone (Karunanayaka & Naidu, 2017). For Block (2019), exchanging knowledge and innovation characterizes an open knowledge culture by including individuals with critical thinking who communicate and share knowledge, seek solutions, and exchange the opportunity to learn and improve. The basic principle of this culture is trust. García-Peñalvo (2023) advises the transcendental changes with Artificial Intelligence (AI) in teaching and learning processes and recommends rethinking activities that guide students toward critical analysis, comparison of sources, and selecting and formulating appropriate questions for the talk. Training a new way to prepare pedagogy to consider ethical aspects and evaluate the uses and customs of the Internet can be vital to deepen the construction of a culture of information and digital literacy.

2 Method

A Systematic Literature Review (Kitchenham & Chartersele, 2007; Werner et al., 2012), applied to articles related to open technology platforms, allowed the identification of sites using and disseminating open educational resources in academically recognized indexing systems (Scopus and Web of Science). We analyzed the content, inferring from a focal text in a social context (Bauer & Gaskell, 2000), seeking answers to the questions and categories of analysis and attributing meanings based on the study objectives, linking it also to contributions for educational innovation (Ramírez-Montoya & Lugo-Ocando, 2020). To address the ethical processes in the study, we managed data effectively per the evidence collected. Researchers used the study questions for analysis during platform observation following Traxler’s (2012) recommendations. The SLR served as a strategy to identify studies related to OER platforms to answer questions related to the dimensions of interest (see Table 1). The five phases were: (1) identifying the research questions; (2) the search process; (3) inclusion and exclusion criteria; (4) the data selection and extraction process; and (5) data synthesis.

  • Phase 1. Identifying the research question

The purpose of this study was to outline the dimensions, research questions (outlined in Table 1), and potential findings that emerged from the review process. Recognizing the importance of clarity, we acknowledge the need to delve into the intricacies of our methodology to enhance comprehensibility.

Table 1 Dimensions, research questions, and possible answers
Full size table

To elaborate further, our search parameters included a thorough analysis of peer-reviewed scientific journals, databases, and well-established platforms. Specifically, we targeted materials that directly addressed the complexity of cognitive development. This complex cognitive capacity, as previously emphasized, involves the fusion of critical, systemic, innovative, and scientific thinking (Lipman, 1998; Silva & Iturra, 2021). In addition, the integration of socio-formative actions broadened the horizons of complex thinking and equipped students with a comprehensive set of skills to face multifaceted challenges (Tobón & Luna-Nemecio, 2021).

In line with the demands of the digital transformation era and the imperatives of Education 4.0, we highlight the importance of fostering complex thinking skills in higher education institutions. Consequently, our study aims to contribute to this discourse by profiling OER platforms in terms of their potential to foster the development of complex thinking. This profiling effort seeks to provide valuable guidance for frameworks that encourage the reuse, adaptation, and dissemination of educational resources. This, in turn, will promote the cultivation of multidimensional cognitive skills that are essential for addressing the dynamic uncertainties of our contemporary world.

  • Phase 2. Search process

To define the search string, we identified the key concepts of this research without restricting the search to the timeline, since this topic has only been under discussion for a few years. Table 2 presents the search strings and the articles and proceedings found.

Table 2 Search string
Full size table

  • Phase 3. Inclusion and exclusion criteria

The search protocol and guidelines for selecting and evaluating relevant studies were as follows (Table 3):

Table 3 Inclusion and exclusion criteria
Full size table

  • Phase 4. Data selection and extraction process

In phase 4, we searched the articles and then performed data extraction. Subsequently, we input the information into a spreadsheet database. The search yielded 73 studies: 39 in Scopus and 34 in WoS. The information extracted from each article included the author(s), keywords, title, type of access, year of publication, publication name, number of citations, DOI number, affiliations, language, country, and abstract. Based on these data, 24 duplicate articles were identified and moved to another database sheet, resulting in 49 pieces. After applying the selection according to the exclusion criteria study, 20 articles remained as review candidates. Figure 2 shows the delimitation using the PRISMA method.

Fig. 2
figure 2

Selection process (PRISMA based on Page et al., 2021)

Full size image

  • Phase 5. Data synthesis

In phase 5, the classification sought to identify studies addressing platforms for students oriented toward open educational resources in the WOS and SCOPUS databases and answer research questions RQ1, RQ2, and RQ3 described in Table 4. We sought to identify open platforms with possibilities for the Retain, Revise, Remix, Reuse, and Redistribute classifications. The abstract’s information, keywords, and title were reviewed to categorize each article properly.

Table 4 Articles considered for the SLR
Full size table

3 Results

The SLR database is available here: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7662654. This section presents the results related to the research questions. The tools used for the graphs were Excel, Bibliometrix R tool (Aria & Cuccurullo, 2017), and Tableau. Table 4 presents the articles under study. The Id is the article identifier number for identification in the following sections of this article. These articles provide an access link to the presented platform, allowing us to perform the analysis.

We observed the trend of publication topics on OER platforms through bibliometric analysis. Thus, we detailed the following headings: (a) overview, (b) most-globally-cited documents and word cloud, and (c) conceptual structure.

  1. a)

    The overview is a valuable insight into observing the general dynamics of publications. Figure 3 presents a three-field plot (Sankey diagram) showing the relationship between authors, sources, and countries of publications, allowing geo-referencing the research on these topics. We note the participation of countries like the USA, Belgium, and India.

Fig. 3
figure 3

Three-field plot (Sankey diagram) relation of authors, courses, and countries of publications

Full size image
  1. b)

    Figure 4 indicates the ten most globally cited documents, indicating the most interesting articles on the subject by other researchers.

Fig. 4
figure 4

Ten most globally cited documents

Full size image

The document word cloud (Fig. 5) reveals the most relevant keywords of the articles. It shows that e-learning, education, and covid-19 were the most frequent words. The above allows us to identify how open educational resource platforms have increased since the covid-19 pandemic.

Fig. 5
figure 5

Keywords word cloud

Full size image
  1. c)

    The conceptual structure analysis utilized Keywords Plus, which allowed associating the most relevant concepts of the articles and thus visualizing these connections. Figure 6 illustrates the relationship of the main concepts. Some of the most significant discussions in the analyzed articles focused on the students, technologies, and the importance of integrating these two through different mechanisms.

Fig. 6
figure 6

Conceptual connections based on Keyword Plus

Full size image

  • RQ1. What type of open license do the platforms that allow the user to perform 5R activities hold?

Table 5 presents possibilities of using the 5Rs (Retain, Revise, Remix, Reuse, and Redistribute). First, it identifies the type of licensing because if it has a creative commons license, it is possible to identify the potential for 5R. However, if it does not have an open license, i.e., copyright, it will not be possible to perform any 5R action.

Table 5 RQ2 analysis AILM framework (Wiley, n.d.)
Full size table

Figure 7 indicates the articles [A1, A2, A3, A4, A5, A6, A7, A8, A9, A10, A11, and A12] discussing platforms with a Creative Commons license, confirming the possibility for Retain, Revise, Remix, Reuse, and Redistribute. Items [A10] and [A11] can only consider Revise, Remix, and Reuse activities because they use a “No derivatives ND” license that only allows Retain and Redistribute. The articles [A13, A14, A15] do not indicate any licensing in their platforms, so they are not OERs because an open license is a characteristic of OERs. The article [A16] refers to applications with access in a freemium model but under a copyright license, so it is[ not an OER. The papers [A18, A19, and A20] have a copyright license (although their content is accessible), so they are not OERs.

Fig. 7
figure 7

RQ1 analysis of open licenses: Do the platforms have open licenses that allow performing 5R activities

Full size image

  • RQ2. Do the technical options of the platform allow or disable the 5R activities allowed by the open licenses (Wiley, n.d.)?

We used the AILM framework (Wiley, n.d.) to identify the capacity of the technical options of the 12 evaluated platforms to perform 5R activities per the creative commons license provided. The results were as follows:

With feature A, only the articles [A4, A8, and A9] provided the ability to access and edit the resource. With feature L, only [A3 and A12] had a basic level of expertise because the other 10 required advanced knowledge to edit the platform. With feature M, none of the platforms. With feature S, none of the platforms.

  • RQ3. Which sub-competencies of complex thinking, and computational thinking can be developed with OER’s possible use and openness? (And what activities foster the sub-competencies of complex thinking (Ramírez-Montoya et al., 2022)?

According to Ramírez-Montoya et al., 2022, complex thinking is a meta-competency comprising four sub-competencies that encompass higher-level cognitive skills: (a) critical thinking, (b) scientific thinking, (c) systemic thinking, and (d) innovative thinking. Table 6 shows that at 100% of the studies combinations develop critical thinking as it shows that its main objective is that of the students to solve problems and seek a creative solution through a variety of tools, Alsaleh (2020) points out that this is good practice to answer a question by examining different options and choosing the most suitable and logical one. It was found that 90% of the studies impact the development of innovative thinking and 35% creative thinking, because they seek to generate the capacity for creativity in those who use the platform and that this creativity can be put into practice with a high degree of success (Passig & Cohen, 2014). 45% of studies analyzed are designed to develop systemic thinking because it uses methodological tools to manage emerging complexity in local and global contexts (Barile et al., 2018). On the other hand, the analysis shows that 25% of the studies found promote the development of computational thinking because it has been shown keeps participants’ attention and motivates them to use abstraction and problematic decomposition when tackling large tasks and to use heuristic reasoning, iteration and search to discover solutions to complex problems (Guzdial, 2012). and in the same way develops scientific thinking because it involves intentional information seeking, including asking questions, testing hypotheses, making observations, recognizing patterns, and making inferences (Kuhn, 2010) through various open educational practices and open education resources.

Table 6 Development of sub-competencies within possible activities on OER platforms due to their openness
Full size table

An assumption regarding the development of the four sub-competencies was that users could resort to the 5Rs, not limited to retention and reuse, but also revision, remix, and redistribution activities. Therefore, we considered that users must use and develop sub-competencies. In the cases identifying other combinations not of the four sub-competencies, we found that the activities did not enable the 5Rs and were limited, thus restricting the development of the sub-competencies.

4 Discussion

This study presents the articles between 2019 and 2022 found in SCOPUS and WoS databases referring to OER on technological platforms with reusable, adaptable, and redistributable activities seeking to develop complex thinking. Table 4 presents 20 studies addressing an OER technology platform with the web link to indicate the platform’s hosting. According to UNESCO’s recommendation on Open Educational Resources (UNESCO, 2019), four actions can encourage quality education, including to develop the abilities of involved parties to generate, access, repurpose, modify, and disseminate OER. The analysis of these studies reveals the gaps in the platforms for developing technological platforms where everyone can use the OER they share without risk and difficulty, allowing technology communities to continue contributing to the development of the platform’s code.

Standards and certifications that give confidence to its participants and communities could incentivize using, developing, implementing, and regulating open platforms in the open context. For example, the case study [A2] detected the initiative to create open platforms such as Diksha to build on open-source technology for the Indian government, which incorporated internet-scale technologies and enabled teaching and learning using open-source technology called Sunbird licensed from MIT. The study [A11] presented relevant information about offering Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) using open platforms such as Open edX and Drupal to source and display courses in various ways, enabling or making software freely available for use and modification as users see fit. Thus, openness, as stated by Wiley and Hilton (2018), is a set of teaching and learning practices only possible in the context of the affordances of open educational resources as enabled by the 5R, empowering users to contribute to the improvement of open platforms, which encourages public collaboration, and where regulating bodies ensure that there are quality and usability standards required to provide equitable access to citizens.”

The 5R practices emphasize the importance of guidance for good practices to produce OER; therefore, a culture of open access in higher education institutions can impact and generate innovation within the library or technology area and directly in classroom activities. Table 4 shows platforms [A13, A14, A15] that could contribute much to knowledge, but they need to add somewhere the terms of service and the creative commons license they use in the portal and in each OER they share because, without an open license, it is not an open platform or OER. Other authors present their study emphasizing the need to develop open OER platforms, but theirs are licensed under copyright [A16, A17, A18, A18, A20]. González-Pérez and Ramírez-Montoya (2022) point out the need to develop holistic competencies with integrated technological tools, thus requiring teaching–learning strategies to be effectively applied seeking to select tools and appropriate technologies. Table 6 shows that the platforms referred to in studies [A1, A8, A9, A12, A18] develop these sub-competences and studies [A4, A9, A10, A18, A19] develop computational thinking. These platforms are characterized by the fact that they allow students to interact and learn together. Ehlers (2011) defines OEP as a combination of OER and open learning architectures where universities, adult learners, and citizens can autonomously shape their self-directed lifelong learning pathways.

Students and users can benefit from a wide range of explorable resources providing different perspectives and approaches, fostering critical, systemic, innovative, and scientific thinking through the activities they develop, aligned with the openness of the platforms. Table 5 shows the access to editing tools and platform difficulty. Notably, only studies [A3] and [A12] indicated no difficulty performing their activities. Studies [A4, A8, and A9] allowed full access to the code or the resource. The studies [A6, A8, A9, and A1] presented the process and the tools to make e-books, which fostered open classroom educational practices and helped students’ complex thinking. Silva and Iturra (2021) emphasized developing students’ metacognition for their cognitive capacities, strengths, and weaknesses. Ramírez-Montoya et al. (2022) pointed out that open platforms indirectly and positively impact the development of complex thinking competencies. Higher education institutions must create frameworks and technological bases so students can use open OER platforms to develop informational, digital, and complex thinking skills and learn the ethical issues of intellectual property reflected and supported by open platforms.

5 Conclusion

This review article has focused on the link between complex thinking and the characteristics of OER from the learner’s perspective. In particular, the analysis focused on counteracting the deficiencies in their reuse, adaptation, and redistribution to shed light on creating frameworks that can contribute to more effective interactions. Our main findings regarding the platforms analyzed in this review were: (a) most OER platforms clearly state the possibilities to retain, revise, remix, reuse, and redistribute (5R) in their Creative Commons licenses; (b) most OER platforms require an advanced level of expertise for editing; and (c) more than 50% of OER platforms cater to a combination of the four sub-competencies of complex thinking.

The implications for practice are we are still in a phase of exploration regarding the most comprehensive way to build OER platforms. The advantages of new technologies in advancing students’ digital literacy competencies are shadowed by a wide inequity gap that is still far from being narrowed. To form OER platforms, universities must normalize their frameworks to move forward in meeting the needs of the students. Regarding research, some studies show that the activities in the OER platforms are close to addressing the sub-competencies of complex thinking; however, not all clearly state their research focus on how to develop them. There is an opportunity to promote the standardization of open platforms for holistic application.

The limitations of this review have to do with how we selected learner-centered OER platforms, which can always be enriched with other approaches to strengthen the results. In the same vein, identifying complex thinking sub-competencies in an interpretative procedure could benefit in the future from explicit parameters integrated into the OER platforms. Future studies include identifying user behavior in greater depth regarding using OER platform interfaces, assessing how sustainable OER platforms in time affect students’ use and preference for certain products, co-creating with students OER platforms to respond to their needs directly, and coming to a consensus on the impact indicators and how to apply them transversally to be incorporated into OER platform design strategies for greater incidence.

Keyword justification

Given the depth and scope of the article, the selected keywords serve as critical markers for the core themes and research areas the study addresses. Below is a brief justification for each keyword:

Open Educational Resources (OER)

This keyword is central to the study as it focuses on characterizing OER platforms that facilitate the development of complex thinking skills. The article extensively discusses the types, licensing, and reusability of OER, making it a fundamental keyword.

Complex thinking

This keyword encapsulates the primary educational outcome the study aims to foster through OER. The article explores the sub-competencies of complex thinking like innovative, critical, scientific, and systemic thinking, aligning with UNESCO’s recommendations.

Educational innovation

The study identifies and categorizes key platforms that are innovative in their approach to fostering complex thinking skills. This keyword reflects the article’s focus on novel educational strategies and technologies.

Higher education

The study is situated in the context of higher education and aims to provide recommendations for higher education institutions. This keyword helps to specify the educational level at which the research is targeted.

Education 4.0

This keyword is indicative of the modern educational landscape that the article addresses, particularly the integration of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) and the alignment with industrial and societal demands of the 21st century.

The selection of these keywords was made to encapsulate the main themes and objectives of the study, ensuring a comprehensive yet focused representation. This approach aims to assure readers that there was no bias in the keyword selection process.