The essence of distance education, and also of open education, is to provide opportunities for learning to everyone who lacks educational possibilities or credentials, without regarding the absence of previous education, social or economic status, or the location of residence. One of the challenges of this type of education has been to convince the other societal institutions that its quality is equivalent to the education imparted by traditional institutions that provide education in face-to-face settings. The assumption of this article is that to reach the social goals of equity and access, open and distance education must be of high quality. This article presents four criteria of quality that may be applied to open and distance education to measure and demonstrate excellence: effort, performance, adequacy, efficiency and process. For each criterion there is a series of questions that an institution can ask to evaluate its degree of quality. The contribution to quality of two types of research, institutional research and mission-critical research, is also described in terms of the experience of a Canadian open university.

Key words: Open and distance education, quality, access, equity.