OER: A Recipe for Compilation

Creating and remixing an OER can be complicated, especially when you start compiling existing copyrighted or openly licensed works. You can think of your OER as a cookbook filled with recipes from various contributors. A chapter of your OER may contain an H5P tutorial, a photo, and text all written by authors outside of your project team. It is preferable that each of these elements are licensed under Creative Commons or another type of open license. Some elements, however, may be copyrighted and used under fair use.

Compilation works

Compilation works are given special copyright consideration because they are a whole composed of many parts. Let’s continue with our cookbook and recipe analogy to understand U.S. copyright of compilations works and their relation to remixed OER.

First, let’s remember what is considered copyrightable and not. In the age of food bloggers, recipes would seem to be a creative expression accessible and achievable to anyone with a toaster oven and just the right cookie recipe. Section 102 of U.S. Copyright, though, eschews lists, procedures, processes, systems, and methods of operation — many of which could describe a recipe — as not copyrightable. Essentially, a recipe alone is not seen as creative and more like an idea, fact, or concept, which is not copyrightable.

If a recipe is part of a compilation, though, the creative compilation may be copyrightable. This means that all those food blogs are copyrightable because of the blogger’s creative arrangement of a recipe with eternity-long reflections and step-by-step photos.

Your OER will remix a variety of ingredients, preferably public domain or openly licensed content. Like any good recipe, though, there are rules and tricks to mixing your content to legally create an openly licensed compilation.

CC Licensed Content

Identifying and Attributing CC Works

You can identify works openly licensed under Creative Commons (CC) by the attribution. The attribution is located on the landing page of a Pressbook, in the front matter of an ebook, in the footer of a website, or directly next to a particular item.

Formatting Attributions

The Creative Commons organization developed a standardized method for attribution to ensure openly licensed works were properly attributed. Such as the image here, CC licensed content my have a written language, it may have a CC badge or both. Whichever format you choose to display an attribution, Creative Commons prefers you follow the Title, Author, Source, and License (TASL) attribution format.

TASL

TASL Example

For additional guidance, review “Recommended Practices for Attribution,” part of the extensive CC Wiki.

Remixing CC Licensed Content

When remixing works with CC licenses to create your new OER, you need to consider the compatibility of the CC licenses of the original OER. Don’t worry about license compatibility if you are simply quoting from a work. But when you are combining two or more OER, review the below chart to determine if this is possible.

Compatibility of CC Licenses

Tips for Remixing CC Licensed Works

Including an Attribution and License Statement

It will feel a bit odd to remix existing work because copyrighted works generally prohibit such practices. But in open education it is common to remix a work and list yourself as the author of a Pressbook chapter, for instance. You do need to include an attribution statement to properly attribute your sources and licensing information following the TASL format. Depending on how you have remixed sources, you may put this statement in such locations as the front matter of your OER, the end of a chapter, near an object, or a combination of places.

Recap: Licensing Compilations and Remixes

That was a lot of information, so let’s recap the different approaches to the differences in licensing when creating a compilation or remixing openly licensed content. Nate Angell from Creative Commons uses the useful analogy of a compilation as a tv dinner with distinct portions and a remix as a blended smoothie of indistinguishable parts. Watch Andrew Cambron’s quick, visual take on Angell’s explanation below.

Copyrighted Materials

In higher education we enjoy some educational privileges of copyrightable materials. Educational use is made possible through a variety of legalities that you can learn more about in a crash course. In your daily work, you are probably familiar with your ability to cite research in your own publications and library services  such as archiving and lending copyrighted materials. Educational allowances are intended to foster learning and spark innovation.

Using copyrighted material in an openly licensed OER is more restrictive than it is for face-to-face teaching because OER are freely accessible online. Generally speaking, copyright laws and exceptions for educational purposes are more liberal for face-to-face teaching, more strict for teaching in a university password-protected learning management system (LMS), and even more strict for publishing content in the open. During the Pandemic, you may recall, many publishers relaxed licensing to allow emergency instructional adaptations to an online environment. Now, however, we have resumed restrictions placed on teaching with copyrighted works. Again, copyright is more strict when openly sharing copyrighted content online than in a private classroom. 

Fair use

Educational uses of copyrighted materials are enabled by fair use and a number of legal exceptions. Fair use is legal doctrine that allows for people to engage in such activities as criticizing, commenting upon, and using a work for teaching, research, and scholarship. Many of your daily uses of fair use are applicable to OER — quoting snippets from research or critiquing the lighting shown in a screenshot of a film would probably be fine. There may be some pedagogical practices you cannot replicate in your OER, though. To evaluate your use of copyrighted materials and works licensed under CC’s NoDerivatives, follow the four-factor fair use test, detailed below.

Four-Factor Fair Use Test

Fair use advocates often equate the provision to a muscle: if you don’t use it, you lose it. We advocate that you utilize fair use, but start  your evaluation with the “Fair Use Evaluation Tools” provided below and reach out for a consultation.

Library Resources

Some of you may want to supplement your OER with library resources, such as whole journal articles. While library resources are a great way to reduce the educational costs for students, they are copyrighted materials licensed for use by a university under many, many conditions.

Copyright and licensing conditions restrict you from revising, remixing, and redistributing library resources. Your students cannot perpetually access the password-protected sources after graduation (or if a library has to cancel a subscription). That is, you cannot engage in David Wiley’s 5 Rs with copyrighted library resources.

Please reach out to us to discuss any plans to supplement your OER with copyrighted resources.