Open licensing and Creative Commons

Open licensing and Creative Commons

“Open licenses help grease the gears of collaboration by making it clear what you can and cannot do with the creative work of others.” – William Menke

A common misconception about OER is that they are simply free resources. While free is one aspect, how the resource is licensed is equally important. For resources to be considered OER, they must be openly licensed. This means that the permissions traditionally protected by copyright are proactively communicated to users, frequently though not exclusively through the use of Creative Commons licenses.

Put simply, open licenses such as Creative Commons (CC) permit creators to retain copyright but tell others how they can use and adapt their work. Advocates of OER frequently discuss open licensing in the context of the “5 R” activities, i.e. an open license is one that gives users permissions to Retain, Reuse, Revise, Remix and/or Redistribute the content.

At the core of nearly all CC licenses is the Attribution (BY) component, requiring all who reuse your work to provide full attribution to you. Additional terms can be combined into Creative Commons licenses so that you can share your work with different conditions for reuse. You can explore the Creative Commons in greater detail in the next section of this workshop.