Access to Knowledge in Africa: The Role of Copyright
The emergence of the Internet and the digital world has changed the way people access, produce and share information and knowledge. Yet people in Africa face challenges in accessing scholarly publications, journals and learning materials in general. At the heart of these challenges, and solutions to them, is copyright, the branch of intellectual property rights that covers written and... more
Open Educational Resources and Higher Education
This paper examines the concept of OER in more detail, offering a simple, clear definition, explaining the economic and educational potential behind that definition, introducing examples of OER practices around the world, exploring legal considerations, and highlighting some of the challenges to releasing the transformative potential of OER. 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
Defining Noncommercial: A Study of How the Online Population Understands "Noncommercial Use"
In 2008-09, Creative Commons commissioned a study from a professional market research firm to explore understandings of the terms "commercial use" and "noncommercial use" among Internet users when used in the context of content found online. The empirical findings suggest that creators and users approach the question of noncommercial use similarly and that overall, online U.S. creators and... 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
Open Educational Resources and Creative Commons Licensing
OER are teaching, learning and research resources that reside in the public domain or have been released under an intellectual property license that permits their free use or re-purposing by others. more
Information Sheet on Creative Commons "NC" and "ND" Restrictions
The NC element in the CC licences means that you may use the work only in the cases described as follows. For all other uses you need permission from the rights holder of the work (this is typically the author, institution or publisher who made the work available). The rights holder may ask for a royalty from your profits or for a compensation for the transaction. more
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