Open Licenses

What are Open Licenses?

Copyright law automatically protects all creative works, but a copyright holder may waive some or all rights by placing them under an open license or in the public domain.

The spectrum of rights at CSU Channel Islands is licensed under a CC BY-SA 4.0 License.

Creative Commons Licenses

This section is adapted from Instructors’ Guide for Explorations in Explorations: An Open Invitation to Biological Anthropology.

The most commonly used license types are Creative Commons (CC) licenses. The Creative Commons was established in 2001 to allow copyright holders a standardized, flexible, and legally sound way to express the conditions under which others can use the work.  

Creative Commons offers six copyright licenses. Each license requires users to provide attribution (BY) to the creator when the material is used and shared. The most permissive CC license requires only this attribution (CC BY). Beyond that, creators may select additional limitations including Share Alike (SA), Non Commercial (NC), andNo Derivatives (ND).The six licenses, and descriptions of the limiting terms are provided in the image below, and more information can be found on Creative Commons website.

Creative Commons licenses and their terms. Credit: Understanding Creative Commons Licenses (Figure 3.1) by Das and Kinjilal 2015 is under a CC BY-SA 3.0 License. 

Best practices for attributions are to include: title of item, author, source, license, and relevant links. See examples on the Creative Commons website.  

CC Licenses and OER

This section is adapted from Instructors’ Guide for Explorations in Explorations: An Open Invitation to Biological Anthropology.

According to David Wiley’s definition of “openness,” true OER grant legal permission to engage in the “five R activities”: reuse, retain, revise, remix, and redistribute.

• Retain: make, own, and control a copy of the resource. 
• Revise: edit, adapt, and modify your copy of the resource. 
• Remix: combine your original or revised copy of the resource with other existing material to create something new.
• Reuse: use your original, revised, or remixed copy of the resource publicly.
• Redistribute: share copies of your original, revised, or remixed copy of the resource with others. 

Note that CC licensed materials that include “No Derivatives (ND)” are not considered OER because they do not allow the public to revise or remix the material and share them publicly. Therefore, such materials do not meet the 5R criteria (or any of the major OER definitions).