Choosing a License for Your Materials

If you are creating your own OER, you will need to decide what rights you will share with the people using your creation, and consequently, which Creative Commons license you should use. We recommend a CC BY or CC BY-SA license. However, the license needs to reflect the content you are re-using, because the license will dictate to a certain extent which content you can re-use. 

 

Steps for choosing a license

1. Go to the Creative Commons license chooser Links to an external site.. It will ask you two simple questions about how you want to share your materials, and then tell you which license to use.
2. Make sure the license you have chosen is compatible with the materials you will be reusing. The chart below shows which licenses are compatible with each other. (Note, the main license is indicated in the vertical column, the license of the reused content is indicated in the horizontal row.)

  

Image credit: Compatibility chart adapted from Creative Commons FAQ Links to an external site., licensed CC BY.

The bold box in the chart above denotes that Public Domain, CC BY, and CC BY-SA are the licenses that allow you to reuse the widest variety of open content in your resource.

As an example of how to use the chart: if your chosen license is CC BY-NC, but you are using a lot of text from Wikipedia, which is CC BY-SA, you can see that those two licenses are not compatible. For a clear video explanation of the concept of license compatibility, see this "Creating OER and Combining Licenses" video by Florida Virtual Campus beginning at 00:04:23. (This video carries a CC BY-SA license.)

 

Another way to describe it:

• If your work is licensed CC0 (i.e. Public Domain), you can reuse only other CC0/Public Domain content
• If your work is licensed CC BY, you can reuse any content that carries these licenses: CC0, CC BY
• If your work is licensed CC BY-SA, you can reuse any content that carries these licenses: CC0, CC BY, CC BY-SA
• If your work is licensed CC BY-NC, you can reuse any content that carries these licenses: CC0, CC BY, CC BY-NC
• If your work is licensed CC BY-ND, you cannot reuse any content
• If your work is licensed CC BY-NC-SA, you can reuse any content that carries these licenses: CC0, CC BY, CC BY-NC, CC BY-NC-SA
• If your work is licensed CC BY-NC-ND, you cannot reuse any content

 

Steps for Adding the License to Your Materials

Once you have chosen a license, you will need to add it to your content. The Creative Commons license chooser Links to an external site. mentioned above will generate the correct icon and text for you to copy and paste into your materials.

It is best practice to include the following information when you add the license:

• License icon (smaller   or larger  ), which can be downloaded on the Creative Commons website Links to an external site.
• License name
• Link to license deed, which explains in simple language what the user's rights are (example Links to an external site.)
• If your name is not listed clearly somewhere else as the author, make sure to list it with the license!

 

For COERLL sponsored projects, please follow these standards Links to an external site. when licensing your materials:

• Each deliverable should be clearly marked with the CC license of the Project director’s choice, and refer to the authors and to COERLL.
• Videos should end with the COERLL logo, UT logo, and Creative Commons bumper downloaded from the Creative Commons Wiki Links to an external site.

 

Examples:

The following screenshot shows a lesson plan that is clearly licensed:

The following video is clearly licensed:

 

Open licenses for local contexts

Local Contexts Links to an external site. is an initiative to support Native, First Nations, Aboriginal, and Indigenous communities in the management of their intellectual property and cultural heritage specifically within the digital environment. This is useful because Creative Commons licenses may not always be appropriate for sharing protected cultural heritage. See also Creative Commons' statement Links to an external site. on the topic.

 

Learn More about Creative Commons, Copyright, and Open Licensing

•  This joint statement from four major OER publishers Links to an external site. explains why the open community advocates for the CC BY license
•  Copyright Crash Course Links to an external site. from the University of Texas Libraries
•  Creative Commons offers Certificates Links to an external site. to people who complete a course with them
•  The Creative Commons Wiki has a useful list of considerations before choosing the NonCommercial license Links to an external site.

 

 

 

 

Go to the next page to learn more about remixing and revising OER.