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OPAL has been established through international organisations including UNESCO, ICDE and EFQUEL in order to establish a forum which works to build greater trust in using and promoting open educational resources. The project is part funded by the European Commission Education and Training Lifelong Learning Programme.

OPAL Initiative is a partnership between seven organizations including ICDE, UNESCO, European Foundation for Quality, the Open University UK, Aalto University and the Catholic University Portugal. It is led by the University of Duisburg-Essen, Germany and partly funded by the European Commission.

The OPAL Initiative moves beyond the issue of access to open educational resources (OER), and focuses on innovation and quality through open educational practices (OEP). Existing approaches for fostering the use of OER have made achievements by focusing on building access to resources (MERLOT, MIT OpenCourseWare, Stanford iTunes,OpenLearn, Rice University, the UNESCO Open Training Platform, the UNESCO OER wiki) and licence models (Creative Commons). However, concerns over quality, the absence of trust on the part of learners and educators, and a lacking sense of ownership of the materials hinder wider acceptance of OER. OPAL seeks to build trust by establishing an environment for quality and Innovation through OEP.