opensocialwork.org

What It Is

Open Social Work is a collaborative project dedicated to building information equity in the field of social work. Co-founded by Dr. Matthew DeCarlo of Saint Joseph’s University and Kimberly Pendell of Portland State University, the platform is guided by the belief that “access to knowledge is a human right.” Through open educational resources and open-access research, it promotes educational equity and the sharing of science.

Core Dimensions

• Subject Area and Content: Focused on the field of social work. Its content covers not only open educational resources and open science practices, but also goes deeply into industry oversight. In particular, it offers sharp academic criticism of the psychometric standards of the ASWB (Association of Social Work Boards) licensure exams, exposing issues such as violations of professional testing standards and neglect of score fairness.
• Teaching Format and Certification: This is not a structured online course in the traditional sense. Instead, it is presented as a repository of open educational resources and blog posts. It does not offer any official accreditation or certificates; its core value lies in knowledge sharing and academic advocacy.
• Instructors and Background: The founders have strong academic credentials, both being experienced university-based scholars—a clinical assistant professor and a social sciences librarian—which helps ensure the academic rigor of the content. All content follows the CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 license, allowing free non-commercial sharing and adaptation.

Pricing

Completely free. As an open educational resources project, its core mission is to remove economic barriers to knowledge access, and all articles and resources are freely available.

Pros and Cons

• Pros: Completely free and released under an open copyright license, greatly promoting educational equity; backed by solid academic expertise, with sharp industry critique, such as its scrutiny of ASWB exam standards and paid consultants; focused on social justice and information equity.
• Cons: The content leans toward academic advocacy and policy critique, with a lack of systematic career skills training courses; the site is built on WordPress, so the interface is relatively basic and the navigation experience is average.

Who It’s For

Especially suitable for social work students, educators, researchers, and anyone interested in the fairness of social work licensure exams, psychometric standards, and open science.

Access from China

The site is hosted on WordPress.com, which is generally not directly accessible from mainland China. A proxy tool is required for normal browsing.