Most Open Educational Resources are released under Public Domain or Creative Commons (CC) Licenses. This means teachers and students can freely copy, share, and sometimes modify these resources without having to seek the creator's permission.
Confused about exactly what you can and can't do with a particular license type?
Use this handy cheat sheet for reference!
| License Type | Copy & Publish | Modify & Adapt | Commercial Use | Attribution Required | Change License Type |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
Public Domain or PD or CC0 |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
No* |
Yes |
|
Attribution only or CC BY |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
|
Attribution-ShareAlike or CC-BY-SA |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
No |
|
Attribution-NoDerivatives or CC BY-ND |
Yes |
No |
Yes |
Yes |
Not Applicable |
|
Attribution-NonCommercial or CC BY-NC |
Yes |
Yes |
No |
Yes |
Yes |
|
Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike or CC BY-NC-SA |
Yes |
Yes |
No |
Yes |
No |
|
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives or CC BY-NC-ND |
Yes |
No |
No |
Yes |
Not Applicable |
* Under CC0, the need for attribution is not legally required, but may still be required based on ethical and/or professional norms.
For more about CC licenses, refer to: https://creativecommons.org/licenses
Many thanks to the creators of the following resources that inspired this OER guide:
SJSU: Open Educational Resources by College
Humboldt State University: Open Educational Resources (OER)
This website is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
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