All Guides: Open Educational Resources (OER) Toolkit: Open Licenses

Content found on the internet is under “all rights reserved” copyright unless otherwise specified
Open licenses allow copyright holders to specify how their works can be used and shared
Most open licenses enable the "5 R’s" of OER; others can: revise, remix, reuse, redistribute, and retain
The most common open licenses for educational materials are Creative Commons Licenses

All rights reserved copyright	Open license
Automatically granted at the moment of creation - no further steps needed	You add an open license to your work to let users know which permissions you grant (example: look at the footer on this page)
Copyright holder may give permission for certain uses if you contact them (this can take a long time)	Copyright holder specifies permission in advance for certain uses of their work (shortcut!)
You can make a fair use argument for educational reuse without the copyright holder’s permission, but that argument is only good for your course	You can share your open course widely because downstream users already have permission to reuse all the content under the terms of the open license

	CC-BY: Users can do the 5 R’s with the work as long as they provide attribution.
	CC BY Share-Alike: Users provide attribution AND license their derivative work exactly the same way as the original.
	CC BY Non-Commercial: Users provide attribution AND are not allowed to use the work for any commercial purpose.
	CC BY No Derivatives: The work can’t be changed, so users can’t do the 5 R’s. Doesn’t meet the definition of open educational resources!

The 5Rs of OER

...While retaining the creator's copyright, at the same time.

Creative Commons License Chooser
Choose your license and get the embed code to display on web versions of your work.
Example Student Agreement to Publish Coursework under a CC License
This form is intended for use when students wish to mark their course work as an open educational resource by assigning it a Creative Commons license. From University of Colorado Boulder Libraries. A Google Doc, must be signed into Google and save a copy when prompted.