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Open Educational Resources (OER): Creative Commons Licensing

Open Licensing

A video presentation from Open Oregon explaining what open licensing is and its relevance in the OER movement.

"Open Licensing" by Open Oregon is licensed under CC BY 4.0

Creative Commons Licenses

Here is a list of licenses provided by the Creative Commons site.

Attribution 
CC BY

This license lets others distribute, remix, tweak, and build upon your work, even commercially, as long as they credit you for the original creation. This is the most accommodating of licenses offered. Recommended for maximum dissemination and use of licensed materials.

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Attribution-ShareAlike 
CC BY-SA

This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon your work even for commercial purposes, as long as they credit you and license their new creations under the identical terms. This license is often compared to “copyleft” free and open source software licenses. All new works based on yours will carry the same license, so any derivatives will also allow commercial use. This is the license used by Wikipedia, and is recommended for materials that would benefit from incorporating content from Wikipedia and similarly licensed projects.

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Attribution-NoDerivs 
CC BY-ND

This license allows for redistribution, commercial and non-commercial, as long as it is passed along unchanged and in whole, with credit to you.

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Attribution-NonCommercial 
CC BY-NC

This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon your work non-commercially, and although their new works must also acknowledge you and be non-commercial, they don’t have to license their derivative works on the same terms.

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Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 
CC BY-NC-SA

This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon your work non-commercially, as long as they credit you and license their new creations under the identical terms.

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Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 
CC BY-NC-ND

This license is the most restrictive of our six main licenses, only allowing others to download your works and share them with others as long as they credit you, but they can’t change them in any way or use them commercially.

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Creative Commons Licenses & OER

The following image highlights which Creative Commons (CC) licenses represent more and less open resources. It is important to remember that by using a CC license, the creator maintains copyright, but makes reuse more seamless by providing this information upfront.

creative commons and OER continium

(Image source: Adapted from Cable Green, 2015, https://www.slideshare.net/cgreen/going-open)