Reaching the Summit: Publishing
Licensing Statement
Register Your Hike, License Your OER
Licensing your OER is like registering in a trail register logbook. Hidden away in a wooden box at the trail head, the logbook reveals the names of those whose footprints you will follow to your destination. Adding your name to the tally likewise identifies your footfalls to those who have yet to arrive. Registering a hike allows all wayfarers to identify community members with their plodding.
Similarly, affixing an open license on your OER is a way to acknowledge those who have come before you or how you have built upon existing work. The mark also can designate how you trailblazed by creating an original work. It also signals how those who come after you may utilize your work. In our previous sections on remixing and attributing openly licensed materials, you selected a license and wrote a TASL attribution statement for your OER. Now it is time to place the licensing information in the Book Info and within the front matter of your Pressbooks.
Add Your OER License and Attribution
Step 1: Add a License to Your Book Info Page
To make certain your license displays on the landing page and footer of your Pressbook, you need to update the licensing information in your book information, located under Book Info in the main tool navigation to the left of the screen and at the bottom of the Book Info page.
Select the arrow for steps to add a license page
Directions
- Open the Book Info page [1] and scroll to the Copyright section near the bottom of the page.
- Use the drop-down box [2] to select your Copyright License, which should be the appropriate Creative Commons license excluding any variation of a No Derivatives license.
- In the Copyright Notice text box [3], write the TASL attribution for your OER. We also like to include a notation that clarifies the license applies to the collection and that items within the collection may have more restrictive licensing (i.e., including at least “except where otherwise noted” after TASL).
- Ex., Open Voices, Just Choices: OER for Social Justice Faculty Handbook by Karna Younger and Theresa Huff is licensed under CC-BY 4.0, except where otherwise noted. Some parts of this collection have more restrictive licenses. Please note those licenses when you use this collection.
Step 2: Add license statement to your front matter
Adding licensing information to the front matter of your OER allows you to include more detail, such as a change log or Versioning History that details remixed original sources and alternatively licensed content.
Select the arrow for steps to place a licensing statement in the front matter
We suggest you place your statement in one of two locations:
- On an “About this OER” page if you want to contextualize the license within the intended use of your OER or other information.
- On a “License Attributions” or similarly titled page to make the licensing information easy to locate or to provide detailed licensing information, such as versioning history for the OER.
- “License Attributions” page in Open Voices, Just Choices offers a simple way to display your licensing statement.
- “Source OER Attributions” page in Abnormal Psychology by Jordan A. Cummings[1] demonstrates how to organize detailed chapter-level licensing information. We would add the OER licensing statement at the top of the page.
- Similarly, the Versioning History page in BCCampus’s Accessibility Toolkit, Second Edition by Amanda Coolidge details the development and revision of the OER.
OER Licensing Tips
- If creating a completely original work, you may choose any open license you would like that allows for modifications. For example, if applying a Creative Commons license, you may apply any attributes except ND (NoDerivatives).
- If remixing existing OER, make certain your license is in compliance with the terms of the existing works. For example, if an existing work is licensed with a Creative Commons SA (ShareAlike) attribute, such as CC BY-SA, then you must license your work with the same or compatible license. Check out the Creative Commons License Compatibility chart for more guidance.
- Regardless of the originality of your OER, it is okay if you have included content that falls outside the licensing of your OER. Ex., an unaltered chart licensed under Creative Commons NoDerivatives or a thumbnail of a copyrighted profile photo.
- Include “except otherwise where noted” to the tail of your OER attribution statement.
- Whether in the metadata of your images, figures, and H5P or in footnotes, properly attribute differently licensed content throughout your OER.
- Attribute content with special licenses and more with Open Oregon Educational Resources’ “Attribution Style Guide” by Michaela Willi Hooper[2].
- Share Versioning History. Your readers can easily track remixed content and modifications when you place this transparency tool in the front or back matter of your OER. See the Versioning History page in BCCampus’s Accessibility Toolkit, Second Edition by Amanda Coolidge, Sue Doner, Tara Robertson, and Josie Gray[3].
- Abnormal Psychology by Jordan A. Cummings is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0. ↵
- "Attribution Style Guide" by Michaela Willi Hooper for Open Oregon Educational Resources is licensed under CC BY 4.0. ↵
- Accessibility Toolkit, Second Edition by Amanda Coolidge, Sue Doner, Tara Robertson, and Josie Gray is licensed under CC BY 4.0. ↵
