Week 1 Reading: Using Creative Commons licenses

Overview

This section delves into some specific situations you might run into when working with openly licensed content in an open textbook. It is not meant to be a comprehensive introduction to Creative Commons licenses, but assumes that you have some prior knowledge of CC licenses. If you would like an overview on CC licenses in general, you might want to review the Creative Commons license resources from week 2 of the Adopting Open Textbook workshop.

There are 2 subjects covered below.

1. How to attribute other resources (like images and text) that you use in your adaptation.
2. How to license and attribute the final finished adapted textbook

1) Using & attributing other resources that you use

Why you should use openly licensed materials

If you are looking for content to add to your textbook, you should look for and use Creative Commons licensed material. While you can use copyright material in a textbook you modify or create, it does put a severe limitation on how that material can be reused by others. As well, you must first obtain written permission from the copyright holder to use the copyrighted material in the textbook, and you should clearly note in the textbook the specific material that is copyright so others using the book in the future know they cannot reuse that material.

In short, using copyright material is a barrier to future reuse and limits the usage of the resource in the future. Therefore, BCcampus recommends using Creative Commons material that can legally be shared and reused.

Elements of an attribution

As a general rule, when you attribute a resource you use in your book, you should include 4 items:

1. The title of the original work & where you found it
2. The name of the person who created the original work
3. What license the original work has been released under.
4. If there are any copyright notices with the original.

The following image deals specifically with dealing with CC licensed photos, but can be applied to other resources as well.

Additionally, if you have modified the original resource (say cropped or edited a photo) you should also make note of that in the attribution.

Where to place the attribution

While placing an attribution at the end of a page is acceptable, the best place to put an attribution in an open textbook is immedaitly after the resource you have used. Since open textbooks can be broken apart and sections can be used by others outside the context of the finished “book”, resources should be attributed at the time of use so attribution does not get lost or dissociated from the item it is associated with.

How to word the attribution

If at all possible, include links back to the source of the material. If the author has a profile online associated with the resource, link to that as well. Finally, be sure to include a link to the Creative Commons license used so that others who are not familiar with CC licenses can see the terms of use.

For example, say you use a photo found on Flickr. You could link back to the original photo, link back to the Flickr profile of the photographer, and link out to the CC licenses that the photo is used under.

Here is an example of a photo attribution and where these elements can be place when attributing a photo.

Further resources and examples of how to attribute can be found in the best practices for attribution wiki from Creative Commons.

Tools to help

There are a couple of browser add-ons that can help you capture the correct inforamtion for web-based Creative Commons licensed material. If you work with CC material often, it might be useful to take a look athe these tools as browser add-ons to make attributing content easier. They are;

• Open Attribute - a browser plugin for Firefox and Chrome that grabs the CC license metadata on a web page and turns it into an attribution for you
• Commons Machinery - a suite of plugins for Firefox and open office tools that enables copying and pasting images with the attribution info already attached

2) Licensing your finished adapted book

What part am I licensing when I add a CC license to an adapted textbook?

If the textbook you are working on is an adaptation, you will need to choose a CC license to release your adaptation under. It's important to note that you can only license what you create in the book. So, the changes you made to the book will be covered by the license you choose, while the unmodified sections of the book will be released under the license of the original book.

In other words, you need to respect the license of the original work. You cannot license what you do not create. You can only attach your license to the parts of the book you have created that are new.

The caveat: Share-Alike

There is a caveat. If the textbook you are modifying has a Share-Alike license attached to it, then you can only release the book with the same license that it was originally licensed as. The Share-Alike clause means that you must use the EXACT license that was used in the original for ANY adaptation.

Where do I note the license?

The license should be noted in a few places in the book. First, in the preface of the book there should be a statement that makes it clear that this book is a derivative of the original open textbook. There should also be a list of what changes were made in the book from the original version so people can know exactly what bits are newly created and what are from the original source.

So, in the preface of the book, you could say:

This version of Collaborative Statistics is a modified version of Collaborative Statistics by <authors name>. Changes to the original version of the book are listed at <url or page number with a summary of changes>. The original version of this book was released under a <insert license here> and is copyright by <if original has copyright include that here>. The changes to this book listed on <insert location of summary of changes> are released under a CC-BY license and are copyright by <authors name>. You are free to use, modify or adapt any of this material providing the terms of the Creative Commons licenses are adhered to.

Example

Here is what an adaptation license might look like. This was taken from the Modern Philosophy textbook in the open textbook collection. The only change that BCcampus made to the textbook was to create a version of it in PressBooks (a format change). However, the BCcampus format change into PressBooks was based on a modified version of an original work, meaning we have to give created to both the original author, and to the person who did the first adaptation.

Here is what the preface copyright notice looked like.

This version of Modern Philosophy is a derivative copy of Modern Philosophy created by Alex Dunn, who based his work on the original Modern Philosophy book create by Walter Ott.

This version of Modern Philosophy is released under a Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial ShareAlike 3.0 Unported license. The only modifications made to this version from both the original and the modification done by Alex Dunn the original is the format has been changed. No content has been modified.

The original version of Modern Philosophy was created from public domain resources by  Walter Ott with contributors from Antonia LoLordo and Lydia Patton. Contributions not in the public domain and created by Walter, Antonia or Lydia for the original were released under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. Alex Dunn’s derivative version was also released under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License

Remember to include a summary of the substantial changes you made to the textbook. You don’t have to note minor things, like fixing spelling mistakes, or minor stylistic changes (although if you wanted to be thorough you could note these details). Concentrate on acknowledging the substantial changes. An example might look like:

The modifications from the original textbook include:

• A new chapter (chapter 4) was added covering Feminist Theory
• Chapter 2 was rewritten to remove references to American data and replace with Canadian data.
• The topic “Unusual Behaviour” in Chapter 8 was modified to remove references to dyslexia

Keep in mind that the person reading this book could be viewing a printed copy with page numbers, or an electronic version with no page numbers, so do not use page numbers as references. Instead, use topics and chapters as reference points within the book.

Attribution

This page is a modified version of the page Licensing for Open Textbook Authors & Adapters  from the open.bccampus.ca website and is used under a Creative Comons Attribution 2.5 Canada license.

The images used on this page have been taken from a larger infographic created by Foter and released under a CC-BY-SA license.