Make sure you understand what copyright means and how applying an open-copyright license — typically a Creative Commons license — or designating your copyright to the public domain will affect your textbook.

Copyright

According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, copyright is

the exclusive, legal right to reproduce, publish, sell, or distribute the matter and form of something (such as a literary, musical, or artistic work) ^[1] 

The laws that govern copyright vary from country to country. The copyright owner of a work, such as a textbook, is permitted to sell or distribute their work as they deem fit. This includes assigning a license or offering permissions to another party. For example, if an author decides to sell a book to a publisher, the contract might state that while the author retains the copyright, the publisher has the right to print and sell the first copies of the book globally. In other words, the publisher has “First-time, non-exclusive, worldwide rights,” and for this right, the publisher pays the author. After the publisher has exercised this right, the author may resell their work.

Open-copyright licenses

Creative Commons (CC) licenses are open-copyright licenses. (Also referred to as copyright licenses or some rights reserved.) Unlike more restrictive licenses or permissions (all rights reserved), this set of licenses grants the following permissions and conditions. They give:

the non-exclusive right to anyone anywhere on the globe to retain, reuse, redistribute, remix, or revise the author’s copyrighted work as often as they like, with no expiration date on these permissions.

The only condition to these permissions is that the user must attribute — give credit to — the copyright holder or the creator of the work. This is the minimal requirement of the most basic Creative Commons Attribution (also called CC BY) license. Other versions of this open-copyright license may include additional conditions.

Avoid copyright infringement

It is your responsibility to ensure that all material in an open textbook — whether it be newly created or modified, such as images, data, or multimedia — does not infringe or induce the infringement of any third-party copyrights.

For more information, read How to Avoid Copyright Infringement.

For individual assistance and specific questions, consult with the OERU or an intellectual property/copyright expert at OSU or elsewhere.

Creative Commons Licenses

Here are the most commonly used Creative Commons licenses listed in order of permissions, from most open to least open.

CC BY: This license allows reusers to distribute, remix, adapt, and build upon the material in any medium or format, so long as attribution is given to the creator. The license allows for commercial use.

CC BY-SA: This license allows reusers to distribute, remix, adapt, and build upon the material in any medium or format, so long as attribution is given to the creator. The license allows for commercial use. If you remix, adapt or build upon the material, you must license the modified material under identical terms.

CC BY-NC: This license allows reusers to distribute, remix, adapt, and build upon the material in any medium or format for non-commercial purposes only, and only so long as attribution is given to the creator.

CC BY-NC-SA: This license allows reusers to distribute, remix, adapt, and build upon the material in any medium or format for non-commercial purposes only, and only so long as attribution is given to the creator. If you remix, adapt or build upon the material, you must license the modified material under identical terms.

CC BY-ND: This license allows reusers to copy and distribute the material in any medium or format in unadapted form only, and only so long as attribution is given to the creator. The license allows for commercial use. Please note the OERU does not support this license.

CC BY-NC-ND: This license allows reusers to copy and distribute the material in any medium or format in unadapted form only, for noncommercial purposes only, and only so long as attribution is given to the creator. Please note the OERU does not support this license.