OER Guidelines
Philipps University Marburg
Free Licenses
On this page we would like to make recommendations on the use of free licenses. Creative Commons licenses (CC licenses) are not the only, but the best-known and most widespread option for free licensing of materials, which is why we generally recommend the use of CC licenses. The recommendations made here are expressly to be understood as such; deviations are the responsibility of the creators of the individual materials.
The following also applies here: Binding legal statements can only be obtained from the Legal Department.
CC-BY: Attribution of Authorship
We particularly recommend the CC-BY license for the publication of OER. The addition BY obliges you to give the names of the people who created the material. Otherwise, the material is free for editing; this licensing reflects the 'open' in OER the most, as the five R-freedoms of redacting, reproducing, reusing, remixing and redistributing the material are possible without restriction.
It is important to note that material published under this license can be used by others for both non-commercial and commercial purposes. The only condition is that the names of the people who created the material are mentioned.
Example: Isabel has designed a diagram and published it under CC-BY. An employee at a publishing house finds this diagram and uses it in one of the publisher's books, i.e. for a commercial purpose. In the book, Isabel is named as the author of the diagram, but she has no claim to the publisher's profits from this book.
Isabel may now be annoyed at having used such an open license, which means that she is not entitled to a share of the profits. However, she may also be pleased that her diagram was used and her name mentioned because she wanted above all to bring the knowledge that the diagram represents into the world.
Tip: Think very carefully about which license you want to use and what the consequences are. A license cannot be made more restrictive afterwards. Be aware that in addition to the possibility of commercial use, CC-BY also allows others to modify and reuse your material.
You can specify the licensing directly in the metadata of ILIAS objects under “Quick edit”. The license information can then be found in the information tab of the object. You can get an overview of this on the corresponding information page.
Further information on CC licenses
Further information on CC licenses can be found here: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/?lang=en. The license agreements associated with the respective licenses can also be viewed here. Our recommendations and examples for the other licenses can be found on the following pages. Binding legal statements can only be obtained from the Legal Department.
Regardless of which license you choose, we would like to point out that it makes sense to provide materials that are available for download with a license label on the object itself.
Change of license
Bear in mind that CC licenses are intended to create certainty for users that they can use material without having to contact the author. Changing the license could therefore again lead to uncertainties and is hardly feasible in practice.
It is possible to make licenses more permissive retrospectively. It is only possible to a limited extent to make a license more restrictive retrospectively or to replace restrictive license supplements retrospectively; this is hardly feasible in practice, especially if materials are already in circulation. A subsequent extension of a license is somewhat easier to implement, but is also not recommended. In such cases, individual advice can be provided [at a suitable location].
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