Who owns the copyright to your OER?

Determining who will own the copyright for the various components in an open textbook — before writing begins — is very important.

• If you are the sole author of the book’s content, including text and images (you are not using content from any other source), you own the copyright but agree to publish it under a Creative Commons license and grant the OERU the right to publish, distribute, copy, and update the text.
• If there are two or more contributing authors, all the authors own the copyright to the content they have created or contributed but agree to publish it under a Creative Commons license and grant the OERU the right to publish, distribute, copy, and update the text.
• If the OERU contributes content such as custom illustrations or interactivities to the work, those contributions are owned by OSU but are licensed under a CC BY license for maximum sharing.

Here are potential copyright owners participating in the creation of an open textbook.

• Primary author
• Primary author’s institution
• Contributing authors
• Photographers
• Illustrators
• Graphic designers or others who contribute tables, graphs, charts, etc.
• A contributor’s institution

Once you’ve established who owns the copyright to specific material in the textbook, decide how you will acknowledge each creator for their work. This information should be recorded in your project timeline and detailed in the MOU you sign with the OERU.

Attribution