Research Guides: Open Educational Resources (OER): Creative Commons Licenses

What is Creative Commons?

Creative Commons is a nonprofit organization that enables the sharing and use of creativity and knowledge through free legal tools. Creative Commons licenses are not an alternative to copyright. They work alongside copyright and enable you to modify your copyright terms to best suit your needs. -- From Creative Commons website

A Creative Commons license lets creators decide which rights they would like to keep, and it clearly conveys to those using their work how they’re permitted to use it without asking the creator in advance. Ideally, OER content includes the least restrictive Creative Commons license, CC-BY, which only requires proper attribution. Users are otherwise permitted to copy, distribute, and adapt the work as they like.

Creative Commons Licenses

Choosing and Using Creative Commons Licenses

Things to Consider Before Licensing Your Work
Outlines things to think about before applying Creative Commons license to your material, or use Creative Commons-licensed materials.
Choose A License
Contains information on how to choose the appropriate license for your work.
Marking Your Work with CC License
Learn how to mark your work with a Creative Commons license.
Best Practices for Attribution
Provides some good (and not so good) examples of attribution.
Open Attribution Builder
Easily cite open materials. This tool will automatically generate the attribution for you.

Copyright and Licensing Support

Tammy Ravas, Visual and Performing Arts Librarian and Media Coordinator, provides excellent additional information about Creative Commons and copyright issues in her library guides: Public Domain and Creative Commons: A Guide to Works You Can Use Freely and Copyright Issues and Resources.

This page on the University of Montana (UM) Library Research Guide on Open Educational Resources (OER) by Wendy Walker is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. This page is a modified version of a page from a guide created by Doralyn Rossman at Montana State University.