Open educational resources (OER)

Creative Commons (CC) licences work with copyright to allow creators to grant permission to others to use their works with “some rights reserved”.

The 6 Creative Commons licences

CC BY – The Attribution licence allows anyone to remix, reuse and reshare a work for any purpose, including commercial, as long as attribution is provided to the creator.

 CC BY-SA – The Attribution-ShareAlike licence, allows anyone to remix and reuse works, as long as attribution is provided to the creator and any new work is shared under the same or a compatible licence. This licence permits commercial use.

 CC BY-NC – The Attribution-NonCommercial licence allows works to be reused, remixed and reshared, as long as attribution is provided to the creator and the work is not used for commercial purposes to make a profit.

 CC BY-NC-SA – The Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike licence allows the work to be remixed and reused, as long as attribution is provided to the creator, the work is not used for commercial purposes and any new work is reshared under the same or a compatible licence.

 CC BY-ND – The Attribution-NoDerivs licence allows anyone to reuse and reshare a work, as long as credit is provided to the creator and no adaptations are shared. This licence permits commercial use.

CC BY-NC-ND – The Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs licence allows the work to be reused and reshared, so long as attribution is provided to the creator, the work is not used for commercial purposes, and no changes are made to the original work.

The 4 licence elements explained

 Attribution or BY – this element is included in all licences and requires anyone using the work to credit the creator.

 NonCommercial or NC – only noncommercial uses of the work are permitted.

 ShareAlike or SA – adaptations of the work must be shared under the same or compatible licence terms.

NoDerivs or ND – anyone reusing the work is not permitted to share adaptations of the work.

 The Public Domain Mark is a label used to inform people that a work has no copyright restrictions. It has no legal effect. CC licences should not be applied to works in the public domain as the reuse of these works is already unrestricted.

CC0 (CC zero) allows creators to waive their rights and dedicate their works to the public domain. In some jurisdictions, creators are not allowed to waive their rights so CC0 includes a “fall back” licence. This ensures that the work can be used unconditionally and that the person applying the CCO licence will not assert their copyright.

Adapted from 3. 3 License Types by Creative Commons, CC BY 4.0

You must acknowledge the creator and include any copyright information when you use a resource.

When adding an attribution, it may be helpful to follow the TASL approach:

• T = Title of the work
• A = Author or creator of the work (their name)
• S = Source (link to the work)
• L = Licence (link to the CC licence deed)

Note:

• If you use any materials licensed CC BY 2.0 be very careful to attribute exactly as set out in the licence. It has been superseded and has strict attribution requirements that can make it easy to make a mistake. Materials licensed CC BY 4.0 are preferred.
• CC version 4.0 does not require you to include the title in the attribution statement but it is best practice to include the full TASL information even when not required.

Example attribution

Example of how to attribute this guide:

"Open Educational Resources (OER)" by the University of Queensland Library is licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0

Creative Commons and how it helps us share digital content (YouTube, 5m30s) explains how to share downloaded digital content legally using Creative Commons licences.