Open Content Licensing: A Three-Step Guide for Academics
This guide will enable academics to make informed and purposeful decisions about licensing their work openly. The assumption is that you own the copyright in your own work, and wish to confer permission for its use. The guide is based on the framework of open content licensing, a legitimate, internationally recognised legal practice consistent with copyright law. This guide is aimed at... more
OER Copyright and Licensing Toolkit
This toolkit is aimed at higher education stakeholders who are working with Open Educational Resources (OER). It explains the notion of copyright and describes the different licensing options available to the author/creator of a work. Whether you are wanting to license your own work, or are tasked with clearing copyrighted documents, you will find comprehensive information about the basic... more
The Washington Declaration on Intellectual Property and the Public Interest
The Global Congress on Intellectual Property and the Public Interest, August 25-27, 2011, convened over 180 experts from 32 countries and six continents to help re-articulate the public interest dimension in intellectual property law and policy. The Washington Declaration on Intellectual Property and the Public Interest records the conclusions from the Congress. It has received more than 755... more
Strategic Management of Intellectual Property Rights for OER in UK Higher Education
This paper is written in the context of the JISC and Higher Education Academy Open Educational Resources Programme (Phase 2), and aims to address some of the background issues regarding management of intellectual property rights (IPR) in UK universities. In particular, this guidance aims to assist institutions by prompting strategic decisions that may need to be taken in relation to the... more
CC Licenses and Trademarks: A Guide for Organizational OER Creators and Distributors
This primer is a guide to understanding the relationship between your rights as a copyright owner using Creative Commons licenses (particularly CC BY) and your trademark rights within the context of open educational resources (?OER?). Many people in the OER community are under the mistaken impression that copyright is the only tool at their disposal to protect and control their work and that... more
Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for OpenCourseWare
This document is a code of best practices designed to help those preparing OpenCourseWare (OCW) to interpret and apply fair use under United States copyright law. The OCW movement, which is part of the larger Open Educational Resources (OER) movement, was pioneered in 2002, when the Massachusetts Institute of Technology launched its OpenCourseWare initiative, making course materials... more
Reuse of material in the context of education and research
Sharing educational and research materials is high on the agenda of Dutch higher education and research institutions. It must be possible to use and reuse materials produced or collected at the institutions for educational and research purposes, or as the basis for the development of new materials. more
Open licences
There are many different open licences, some for computer software and some for other forms of material. Each has its own terms, conditions and vocabulary. This chapter is an introduction to open licence language and to the open licences that are important for authors and educators. It is not legal advice. Individuals or institutions thinking of committing themselves to open licensing should... more
Open Content Licensing (OCL) for Open Educational Resources
The last ten years have seen enormous change in the way we construct process and disseminate knowledge. It is now possible to communicate a thought, a message or learning plan in the blink of an eye to a world wide audience at very little cost. This capacity has been extended in recent times by the roll out of broadband networks that allow rich text audio and visual material to be... more