Open Access Licenses
Sometimes, creators want to openly share their work with others. They may even allow their work to be downloaded, mixed, and reused. In this case, the content creator will use an open access license instead of seeking a traditional copyright. For texts, images, video and other creative works, the most commonly use open access license is Creative Commons. For software, there are a variety of established open source licenses.
NOTE: It is important that anyone that creates open educational resources to be used on the A-State campus to be familiar with the different types of licenses. These licenses will dictate how you can use resources as well as how your resources can be used. For example, Arkansas State only supports the most restrictive BY-NC-ND Creative Common license for A-State open access resources.
What is Copyleft?
You will occasionally run across the term "copyleft" as you build your OERs. "Copyleft" refers to open access licenses that require you to use the same license that the original work was created under. The Creative Commons share-alike licenses below are copyleft. However while the term is sometimes used in art and research, it is most often found in regards to open source software.
CC0 - No Rights Reserved
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CC0 (CC Zero) Creators and owners of copyrighted works can opt out of copyright protection, putting their creations into public domain. This "no rights reserved" or "no copyright" license allows the original work to be used in any way without permission or attribution. You can only apply this license to your own work, not things that have fallen into public domain. View the license |
Creative Commons
Creative Commons is a non-profit organization that promotes the sharing of information through copyright licenses and public domain tools. Most OERs fall into one of the six Creative Commons copyright licenses:
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 Attribution - ShareAlike CC BY-SA |
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This is the most "free" of the licenses. This licenses allows others to use, share, remix, and build upon your original work in practically any way as long as they credit you with being the original author. They must also indicate if they made any changes to your original content.
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This license allows others to share, remix, and build upon your original work but they must credit you as the original author and they must license any new creation under identical terms. In other words, their work based on your must also be at a CC BY-SA license.
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 Attribution-NoDerivs CC BY-ND |
 Attribution-NonCommercial CC BY-NC |
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This allows your work to be used and shared as long as credit is given to you. However, this does not allow for the remixing or building upon of work. All work must remain whole and unchanged. |
This license allows others to use, share, remix, and build upon your work as long as credit is given to you and it's used non-commercially. In addition, any new work produced based off your work must also be non-commercial.
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 Attribution-NonCom-ShareAlike CC BY-NC-SA |
 Attribution-NonCom-NoDervis CC BY-NC-ND |
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This license allows others to use, share, remix, and build upon your work under the following conditions: you must be credited as the original author; it must be used non-commercially and all new work built off of yours must also be non-commercial; and any new work built off yours must be licensed under identical terms. This is the non-commercial version of the CC BY-SA license. |
This is the most restrictive of the six Creative Commons licenses. This allows your work to be used and shared non-commercially as long as your credited as the original author and as long as your work remains whole and unchanged. This means that your work cannot be remixed or built upon to create new works. |
Attribution CC BY
