OER Guidelines
Philipps University of Marburg
Free Licenses
The goal of free licensing of OER is to absorb the five R-freedoms as best as possible. These are: free storage and copying of the material, free use, free processing, freedom to mix with other material, and free distribution of the material. Not every license can guarantee these freedoms equally well, for some licenses it is partly unclear which degree of freedom is actually associated with them. We therefore recommend the use of the license CC-BY, see corresponding paragraph.
Please note, that in Germany, it is not possible to surrender your own copyright. So no matter which license you choose for your material, you always remain - and also legally - copyright holder!
Depending on the material or the interests of the creators, the following additional licenses may be considered
CC0: Creative Commons Zero
CC0 makes it possible to publish material in such a way that it can be treated in the same way as public domain material. Authors declare that they waive their right to recognition by attribution. They thereby declare that they will not assert any rights to which they are actually entitled under the law. In principle, it is the user's responsibility to check that the material is free. This is particularly important as online platforms often state that they do not carry out any checks.
Tip: A link to the original source of the material used can help subsequent persons to verify the actual freedom of the material and thus facilitate subsequent use.
Further information in the FAQ on CC0 in the Creative Commons Wiki
All license supplements presented below are to be understood in combination with CC-BY. They add restrictions to the CC-BY license, i.e. they are less open than CC-BY and only allow the five R-freedoms to a more limited extent than CC-BY, which is why we do not recommend them to the same extent as CC-BY. Depending on the material or the interests of the creator, the following additional licenses may be considered. Most of the following additions can be combined with each other.
SA: Share-Alike (sharing under the same conditions)
The SA addendum requires users to republish the OER under the same license after modifying the material, i.e. also with the SA license addendum and all other existing license addenda. It is therefore not possible for further processors to change the license. The SA addendum thus ensures that users are no longer completely free to choose the license for their resulting material. You can find a good overview of this on the OERinfo page.
Verena creates a graphic as an OER and publishes it under CC-BY-SA. Sophia wants to use the graphic for her learning module. As soon as Sophia makes this learning module available to other people, she must choose a CC license that is just as open as Verena's license. This also applies in particular if Sophia makes changes to the original image.
The purpose of the SA attribute is to ensure that free content is not distributed less freely. An example would be a free song that is sold slightly remixed by a record company and is then no longer free. To ensure that OER remain open, the SA attribute is intended to ensure that freedom continues to spread. However, the attribute can also lead to uncertainties because users become unsure as to when redistribution is necessary, for example when it is considered a publication in an educational context or when something is a copyright-relevant modification. Strictly speaking, SA would mean that teachers who use an image in their lecture would also have to redistribute it as OER, as they have already made the image available to the public when giving the lecture. In order to maintain the same freedom, it would then no longer be sufficient to store the lecture in the ILIAS course, but it would have to be made available worldwide with the same free attribution, for example by publishing it as OER in the public domain. This is not always the goal of teachers, which is why the SA attribute may prevent people from using it.
NC: Non-Commercial (no commercial use)
The NC suffix ensures that the material may only be used for non-commercial purposes. This license excludes users as soon as they use the material in a commercial context, i.e. it can be used if OER creators do not want their material to be used commercially.
However, material that has been licensed with the suffix NC may cause users to refrain from using it if they are not clearly sure that they are using the material in a non-commercial context. For something to be considered commercial, there must be an intention to make a profit. However, whether, for example, income from advertising banners on homepages or self-paying educational courses are considered commercial is assessed differently. There is an informative article on this on the OERinfo page.
Sophia creates a diagram and publishes it under CC-BY-NC to prevent publishers from using her diagram commercially, as she wants her material to be available exclusively free of charge. She is aware that this excludes other usage scenarios, for example the use of her diagram in lessons at a private educational institution.
If you are not sure whether you are allowed to use material with the addition NC, do not use it or clarify your case with your legal department. It can really depend on the case: If you teach at a university that offers both tuition-free and tuition-based Master's programs, you may only use the material for teaching in the tuition-free program, not the tuition-based program.
In order to make material usable in as many contexts as possible, we recommend that you refrain from using the license suffix NC if you do not really want to exclude any use in a commercial context. We also recommend that you refrain from using material with the license suffix NC if there are uncertainties regarding the commercial context or, if possible, to clarify these uncertainties first.
ND: Non-derivative (no editing)
The addition ND means that materials may not be changed. ND is often used by OER creators to ensure that individual parts of the material cannot be used out of context. This means that the material may not be shortened, expanded or changed in any other way and then used for other OER materials. This means that the freedom to reuse (for the creation and publication of further OER) is no longer given.
It should also be noted that the license extensions ND and SA (share alike) are logically mutually exclusive. You will therefore not be able to grant a CC-BY-SA-ND license, as the SA license refers to distribution under the same conditions after modification.
Verena creates and publishes a learning module and wants the content of the learning module to always be seen in the overall context. That is why she uses CC-BY-ND when publishing. This ensures that users can only use the material as she has created it. Sophia then wants to use it, but is unsure whether embedding the module in a different context already constitutes a change.
Verena wants to publish her worksheet under CC-BY-ND. She wants to use a diagram by Sophia for her worksheet, but realizes that it has been published under CC-BY-SA. Verena knows that the addition SA in Sophia's material would require her to publish her own material under SA. However, SA and ND cannot be selected at the same time, as they are mutually exclusive. Verena now has two options: Either she uses Sophia's diagram and publishes her worksheet under CC-BY-SA instead of CC-BY-ND, or she does without Sophia's diagram and uses another one instead, so that she can publish her worksheet under CC-BY-ND.
Keep in mind that people who place their free materials under a CC-BY-ND license do not want changes to be made. You should therefore also contact the Legal Department of the Philipps University of Marburg first if you wish to use the material within the scope of the law on qutoation and the copyright regulations.
When choosing ND as a license amendment, it is relevant that this amendment can cause uncertainty on the part of the users of the material. Many users are unsure which changes are covered by this. While a translation, for example, is a change, an editorial adjustment, such as a correction of spelling mistakes, is not. You can also find an overview of the problems in the corresponding OERinfo article
In addition to these uncertainties, ND also prevents further development of the material, as this license addendum prohibits the freedom of OER for processing and further publication. We therefore recommend not using this license.
Since a subsequent change of a license is theoretically possible, but practically associated with problems, the initial granting of the license should be well considered. If in doubt, advice on this can be sought via the support services on the subject of OER.
page translated from German to English with assistance of deepl.com free version
