This document discusses Open Educational Resources (OER) licensing experiences at the Open Universiteit Nederland (OUNL). It covers the selection of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) license for OER, the process of clearing copyrights for course materials, and lessons learned. The key points are: 1) OUNL owns copyrights transferred from employees and external authors, 2) a comparison found CC-BY is commonly used, and 3) registering copyrights and acquiring permissions is relatively easy but support is important to relieve the burden on authors.

1. Licensing OER
Experiences
Robert Schuwer

2. Agenda
• Selection of license
• Process of copyright clearing
• Lessons learned

3. CC-BY Hester Jelgerhuis
SELECTION OF LICENSE

4. Ownership
• For employees:
• Ownership of learning materials are transferred to
OUNL
• For external authors:
• Copyrights of learning materials are transferred to
OUNL
• For all courses a registration is available of copyrights
for components

5. Selection:
• NC: wish of the OUNL
• Unclear what NC includes
• Solution: description on website

6. Description NC: allowed
• (re)use of the course materials by learners for
their own development;
• use of the course materials (whether or not in
edited form) by teachers for their lessons, given
to educational institutions which are publicly
funded.

7. Description NC: Not allowed
• use in legal entities affiliated to educational
institutions with a commercial purpose,
• Postgraduates (PAO) education
• use by commercial companies

8. Comparison
• Dates back to 2011
• Aim: what license is used by members of the
Open Courseware Consortium?
• 201 sites viewed of which 82 sites were not
taken into account (remains 119 sites)

9. Result

10. CC-BY Hester JelgerhuisCC-BY Hester Jelgerhuis
PROCESS OF COPYRIGHT
CLEARING

11. Process

12. 12
Is the original course produced before 1997?
Does the original course have literally reuse of texts that is
used in the open course?
Is the author an employee of OUNL?
Are images of the original course used in the open course?
Is software of the original course used in the open course?

13. CC-BY Hester Jelgerhuis
LESSONS LEARNED

14. Lessons learned (1)
• Registration of copyrights is an asset!
– Immediately clear who are copyright owners
• Acquiring permission to publish is relatively easy
– In most cases permitted
– Sometimes conditional:
• one-time redemption
• Only permitted for this site, no reuse
• Not printable
• Supply weblink to site of owner

15. Lessons learned (2)
• Important to relieve this burden for the author
– Support from knowledgeable experts on copyrights invaluable
– Form worked well

16. Thank you
Robert.Schuwer@ou.nl
@fagottissimo
linkedin.com/in/robertschuwer
www.robertschuwer.nl