Creative material is protected by US (and international) copyright law. Traditional Copyright equals "All Rights Reserved" by the author/creator or rights-holder. The rights-holder needs to be contacted for legal use, or an argument for Fair Use/Educational Use/TEACH Act must be made. Contact scholarlycommunications@tamucc.edu with any questions.
* Please note that NOT all "academic use" is Fair Use, nor is it automatically legal under the law.
That being said, Fair Use and OER can be used together. American University's Washington College of Law produced the open book Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for OER, available at wcl.american.edu [better link is here]; it's licensed under CC BY 4.0. More broadly, the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) published the book Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Academic & Research Libraries.
Material that has fallen or aged out of copyright is considered to be Public Domain. Anyone can now use public domain material in whatever ways they wish. Some repositories or searchable resources include Project Gutenberg, Internet Archive, and HathiTrust. More information on these can be found on the "Locating Open Resources" tab of this guide, under Public Domain Resources.
Creative commons is open licensing that means "some rights reserved" -- depending on the type of licensing, sharing and reuse may be permitted without seeking the rights-holder's permission. See information below on types of CC Licenses.
Regardless of what kind of material you're using, giving proper credit to the creator -- citing your sources -- is essential. Below is a code of best practices using the acronym TASL and developed by Lumen Learning.
The PDF below is a condensed version of the Lumen Learning webpage "Attributing CC Licensed Content."
| Citation | Attribution |
|---|---|
| Academic & legal purposes (plagiarism and copyright infringement). | Legal purposes (e.g. rules of Creative Commons Licenses) |
| The rights of the copy (meaning copyright) are NOT shared with the general public by the copyright holder. | Copyrighted material IS shared with the general public by the copyright holder by marking the work with an open-copyright license. |
| Protects an author who wants to refer to an restricted work by another author. | Author of an open work has given advanced permission to use their work. |
| Use to quote or paraphrase a limited portion of a restricted work. | Used to quote (or paraphrase) all or a portion of an openly licensed work. |
| Can paraphrase, but cannot change work without permission. | Author has given advanced permission to change work. |
| Many citation styles are available: APA, Chicago, MLA. | Attribution statement styles are still emerging, but there are some defined best practices. |
| A reference list of cited resources is typically placed at the end of the book. | Attribution statements are found on the same page as a resource. |
Table from "Self-Publishing Guide: a reference for writing and self-publishing an open textbook" by Lauri M. Aesoph, published for BC Campus under a CC-BY license.
Page features "some good (and not so good) examples of attribution."
How to give credit to creators of open content.
To explain how open educational resources are different from all-rights-reserved (ARR) copyrighted materials, let's look at how they can be used vs. how ARR works can.
The 5Rs
The 5Rs are a useful way to appreciate the value of OER. The 5Rs are permissions, and these permissions help you, the user of openly licensed content, understand what you are allowed to do with the work. These permissions are granted in advance and are legally established through either Public Domain or a Creative Commons license:
Excerpted from "Understanding OER: The 5Rs of OER", Open Educational Resources: Basics and Beyond. The Online Consortium of Oklahoma. CC BY Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
David Wiley put together a great graphic showing how the licenses allow the 5Rs:
"Wiley's 5Rs and Creative Commons Licensing." Chart created by David Wiley, from Google Presentation slide 5Rs to CC Licensing Chart, licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0.
("Licenses" by Prince George's Community College, Creative Commons Licenses [LibGuide], licensing type unknown)
("Creative Commons Licenses" by Prince George's Community College, Creative Commons Licenses [LibGuide], licensing type unknown)
Below are some videos that can further explain how Creative Commons Licenses work.
If you're looking for information on how to license your own creation, here is a great resource -- the Creative Commons Licensing page.
This simple tool will help you decide what kind of license type (including restrictions or a lack thereof) that you want to apply.
To use this tool, you have to either know what license you want to use, or you must decide:
You can also use this tool to generate text for your Creative Commons License to use in either digital or print media.
If you are remixing or combining two ore more OER with different licenses, figuring out what license you can use for the remixed work can get complicated.
This Creative Commons License Compatibility Chart will help you determine if and how you can remix works of different license types into something new. Please note that just because you can't make something new with "X" types, that doesn't prevent you from using the material independently!
30+ webinars regarding copyright and licensing.
"CopyTalk is a series of webinars on specific copyright topics that include orphan works, mass digitization, international copyright developments, pending and recent copyright court cases, the copyright implications of new technologies, and more."
For a textual and legally expert explanation of license types, here is a breakdown by Sara F. Hawkins, Attorney at Law
This page "Locating Open Resources," is adapted from "Open Educational Resources" by Adams State University Nielson Library, used under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License