Choosing the right license for your OER requires you to think about which permissions you want to give to other users—and which permissions you want to retain for yourself. Read the statement “Open Textbook Community Advocates CC BY License for Open Textbooks” (licensed CC BY 4.0 at https://open.bccampus.ca/2016/11/04/open-textbook-community-advocates-cc-by-license-for-open-textbooks/) and think about why they recommend the Creative Commons Attribution license (CC BY) for education. You can find more arguments made about the utility of this same license for publishing scientific research in the article “Why CC BY?” from the Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association (licensed CC BY 4.0 at https://oaspa.org/why-cc-by/).
For basic information about the licenses, and how to choose and apply one to your work or to combined works from other people and sources, revisit section 4.1 “Choosing and Applying a CC License.”
CC LICENSE LEGAL CASES IN OPEN EDUCATION
For a detailed analysis of Creative Commons case law, see section 3.4 “License Enforceability.” Creative Commons maintains a listing of court decisions and case law from jurisdictions around the world on its wiki, licensed CC BY 4.0 at https://wiki.creativecommons.org/wiki/Case_Law.
In 2017–18 there were two legal cases concerning Open Education: Great Minds vs. FedEx Office and Great Minds vs. Office Depot, as referenced in chapter 4. As a reminder, both cases involved OER used by schools for non-commercial purposes. In both cases, the district courts found that a commercial copy shop may reproduce educational materials at the request of a school district that is using them under a CC BY-NC-SA license; thus, no license copyright infringement or violation of the CC license had occurred.
OTHER CONSIDERATIONS
Other than choosing the right CC license, what other aspects of openness and pedagogy are worth considering? You can read a list of best practices to include in your work when building OER at https://maricopa.instructure.com/courses/805732/pages/educational-best-practices?module_item_id=5139807.
Watch the video Simply Said: Understanding Accessibility in Digital Learning Materials by the National Center on Accessible Educational Materials. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HzE5dj1WTSo
