Open Licensing

While “open” in the phrase “open educational resources” has associations with “free” and “accessible,” the key difference between an open educational resource and other educational resources is that they are openly licensed.

The Creative Commons has defined OER as follows: “Open Educational Resources (OER) are teaching, learning, and research materials that are either (a) in the public domain or (b) licensed in a manner that provides everyone with free and perpetual permission to engage in the 5R activities.”

The definition of open educational resources includes, therefore, the application of licenses that allow for varying degrees of perpetual permissions for others to use the work. There are several different kinds of open licenses available. This video provides a description of some open licenses: How to choose a license for open scientific data and code?

Most OER are licensed using Creative Commons Licenses (these are also the licenses used in the OEP Program along with the GNU Free License for open source items).

The following diagram demonstrates how Copyright goes from the right “All rights reserved,” the most restricted use and the default of all created works in Canada, to the left “Public Domain” or “All rights released,” the most open. The more left the licenses are, the more perpetual permissions they grant for others to practice the 5Rs (See definition below). OERs are by definition the licenses above the green arrow on this spectrum because they permit the 5Rs. The licenses that contain ND or No-Derivatives above the red arrow are considered Open Access, but by definition  are not OER. You can use the Creative Commons License Chooser to help you choose which permissions you would like to apply to your work.

 

To openly share your creative work, including open textbooks, without requests for permission, you can dedicate your work to the public domain or license it openly.

Copyright: The Archer Library has a page with information for faculty and students at https://www.uregina.ca/copyright/. For help on copyright, visit the copyright contact information page at https://www.uregina.ca/copyright/contact/index.html.

The 5 R’s of OER and CC Licensing

OERs are resources that are freely available for anyone to use, adapt, distribute, translate and share with no or very minimal restrictions. They are not only about cost savings but are developed by individuals who share the belief that the world’s knowledge is a public good and should be accessible to all. The 5 R’s of OER are:

  1. Retain: you can make and own copies of the resource
  2. Reuse: you can use the resource in your own context
  3. Revise: you can adapt, modify, translated and improve the resource
  4. Remix: you can combine and recombine the resource with other material
  5. Redistribute: you can share the resource with others

Anyone using Creative Commons licenses needs to be aware that once licensed openly, the permissions can’t be revoked.