Licensing OERs

Open Licensing^1.

• Copyright owners can assign or licence their rights. Licensing means another person can use the copyright material, but the owner remains the same​
• Open Licenses are a set of conditions applied to an original work that grant permission for anyone to make use of that work as long as they follow the conditions of the license.​
• The copyright owner can choose to openly license their work if they want others to be able to use it freely, adapt it etc. Open Licenses are provided at no cost

Maximizing the use of OERs requires a basic understanding of licensing. Most (but not all) OERs are licensed using Creative Commons licences.

Creative Commons 

There are four main components of Creative Commons (CC) Licenses The symbols below represent these components and can be combined in a variety of ways to make a CC License.

​Look out for these symbols in the OERs you want to use.  (Sometimes licenses are indicated without symbols but use shorthand such as “CC BY-SA” or “CC BY-NC-ND”)

^{1. Adapted from What are Open Licenses? licensed CC BY 4.0}