X Close

CPD4HE Project Blog

Home

Menu

Licensing OERs

By uczajah, on 28 January 2011

Are universities commercial organisations?
We have had lots of discussions about the  Creative Commons licensing for our resources. We know our resource developers find a non-commercial restriction reassuring – but we are discouraged from using this.  The main reasons we have been given are (1) the ‘NC’ reduces the amount of re-use (can someone point us to evidence for this?) and (2)  universities, which charge fees, could be regarded as commercial organisations and, as such, prevented from using an ‘NC’ resource.
But our Provost has written in a newsletter that, “universities are charities. Their resources may be used only for their charitable purposes”.
We would be interested to know what others are doing about the use – or not – of the NC restriction in OERs. We would like to show that we are open to the possibility of commercial use but would like potential users to contact us first.

OER, IPR and Licensing Workshop

By Man Yang, on 26 November 2010

OER IPR Support LogoThree members of the project team attended the “Before You Start: OER, IPR and Licensing Workshop” which was held at UCL on 24th November.

Led by two members of the OER IPR Support Project Team, the workshop provided an overview of copyright and other IPR issues. It also covered the different types of Creative Commons licences, the obligations to JISC and how we can embed good IPR practice into existing processes.

I found the workshop very helpful. For those who couldn’t attend, here is the link to OER IPR Support where more information and resources can be obtained:
http://www.web2rights.com/OERIPRSupport/