Reviewing Open Licenses

In order for new OER content to be published and used, it has to be licensed. The “open” in OER is most commonly made possible by Creative Commons licensing.

You are probably more familiar with traditional copyright licensing, which gives the copyright holder five fundamental rights: The rights of reproduction, adaptation, publication, performance, and display.

All these rights are reserved by default for any work “fixed in a tangible medium of expression.” This means that copyright holders automatically and exclusively hold these rights, and no other users can exercise these rights without asking the copyright holder for permission on a case-by-case basis.

A Refresher on Creative Commons Licensing

Remember, the Creative Commons licenses are an open alternative to this traditional, restrictive copyright. With Creative Commons licensing, OER carry the permissions for users to freely download, edit, and share the content to better serve all students.

The licenses are free, and easily understandable language and symbols help creators navigate through the process of selecting how they want their work to be used by others. It is important to understand that a CC license is not in violation of copyright and does not replace or mean you are giving up copyright; in fact, CC licensing cannot exist without copyright law. Remember, it is taking an “all rights reserved” and making it “some rights reserved”.

Explore the Creative Commons infographics shared below to review each of the licenses from the users and creators perspectives. Click on the image to download a PDF version of the infographic.

There are four basic attributes, or rights, that you should pay careful attention to in relation to Creative Commons licenses:

This content is adapted from the following work:

• • “OER 101” by David Rose, American University, licensed under CC BY 4.0

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  Unless otherwise noted, this work is licensed under a
  Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.