Whenever you produce a new creative work – whether that’s a new song or story, a picture or a painting, a slideshow or study guide – you are automatically granted a copyright where all your rights are reserved. You don’t need to do anything to be granted a copyright, and it’s intended to protect your work from being used in ways you don’t want, without your express permission.
Open licenses, on the other hand, enable collaboration, development, access, and inspiration from your creative works without requiring you to give up the rights (copyright) automatically granted to you for your creation.
An open license lets you retain ownership of your work, while allowing others to use, share, and remix it, without requesting your permission. For most open licenses, all that is required of the users is to attribute you for your work.
To find more information about using and finding OER, check out our research guide entitled, Open Educational Resources @MJC.
"What is Open Education?" by BC Campus OpenEd is licensed under CC BY 4.0
Image Attribution: "Creative Commons Kiwi" by Creative Commons Aotearoa New Zealand is licensed under CC BY 3.0
A common misconception of OER is that they are simply "free" resources. While free is one component, how the resource is licensed is equally important.
Creative Commons licensing is at the heart of the OER movement. Creative Commons licenses give everyone from individual creators to large institutions a standardized way to grant the public permission to use their creative work under copyright law. From the reuser’s perspective, the presence of a Creative Commons license on a copyrighted work answers the question, “What can I do with this work?”
There are six different licenses. These are:
The six licenses and the public domain dedication tool give creators a range of options. The best way to decide which is appropriate for you is to think about why you want to share your work, and how you hope others will use that work.
For help, try the Creative Commons License Chooser.
"About CC Licenses" by Creative Commons, Creative Commons is licensed under CC BY 4.0
"Open Educational Resources at CCAC" by Community College of Allegheny County Libraries is licensed under CC BY 4.0.