Creative Commons is a
The suite of Creative Commons licenses, first released in 2002, allow creators to communicate directly to their users about the kind of uses are allowed without asking permissions. The licenses range from least open, restricting commercial use and derivatives, to most open, requiring only attribution:
The six main licenses work with copyright law. Creators who issue work with a CC license retain full copyright of the material. Another option CC0 provides creators with an easy way to dedicate their own work to the public domain by forfeiting their copyright altogether.
More than 1.6 billion works are CC licensed by their creators across multiple online platforms like YouTube and Flickr (Creative Commons, 2020). Some of these resources are Open Educational Resources or OERs. OERs can be used as an alternative to traditional, restricted access, textbooks to provide affordable and accessible course content to students.
To be an OER, the material must "either (1) in the public domain or (2) licensed in a manner that provides everyone with free and perpetual permission to engage in the 5R activities" (Wiley, n.d.).
When using material that has been issued with a CC license, you must provide full attribution. Ideal attribution includes the:
OERs and other materials released with a Creative Commons license can be used in any way allowed by the CC license. If your use does not fit the license, you can always request permissions from the creator. For example: you found material issued with a CC-BY-ND license, i.e. a Creative Commons Attribution No Derivatives license. You want to create a translation of the material so it can be accessed in other languages. Translations would be considered derivatives, and the CC-BY-ND license does not allow this. You would still be able to contact the creator for permissions to make the translation.