Submitting materials to oer commons  (Page 3/5)

Parent materials : The term parent refers to materials that are not your own. If the work you are submitting was modified from preexisting/parent materials, (e.g., you answered yes), then complete the following 2 fields“Parent Title”and“Parent URL.”Before including these materials, make sure their license allows the use/reuse of them. Read more about licensing.

Parent URL : Enter the URL where the preexisting materials exist.

Conditions of Use : Because the foundation of OER lies in the ability to freely use and reuse content, setting the conditions of use is extremely important in the OER process. The module“ OER Licensing and Conditions of Use ,”provides further information.

This section of the submission form offers 3 licenses to choose from:

• Creative Commons
• GNU Free Document
• Custom/Other

Each type of license brings with it different legal restrictions and terms of use. You must be the copyright holder to license an original work. When creating derivative or modified works, you must abide by the restrictions of the license of the original work. The main intention for OER is to make materials usable for education and to provide alternatives to the restrictions of "All Rights Reserved". In addition, content released to the Public Domain can be used, shared, and modified without restrictions.

Creative Commons (CC) licenses enable copyright holders to grant some or all of their rights to the public by choosing among four differing licensing options, that in different combinations, produce six licenses . The four options are named: Attribution, Share Alike, NonCommercial, and NoDerivatives. The licenses are being localized so that they may be applied on a per-country basis. The main intention is to allow creators of works to be able to set the terms of use themselves, without needing an attorney, and to avoid problems that copyright laws create around sharing and modifying works.

CC licenses provide a technical solution using RDF/XML metadata that describes the license and the work, making it easier to automatically process and locate licensed works. CC supplies the code on their web site for a licensor to add to their work.

In OER Commons, the most current version of the CC license is the top-level choice. To choose this option, click the radio button next to“Creative Commons Licenses 3.0.”Next, click the link“Choose”under the CC license option. You will be walked through a series of questions to help you determine the type of CC license you want to use.

You can choose other CC licenses besides the most current one. By clicking the + icon next to“show/hide other Creative Commons licenses,”an expanded list is opened for you to choose the one you want. Read more about Creative Commons licensing .

GNU Free Document license is another way to license your work for others to use. The GNU Free Documentation License (GNU FDL or simply GFDL) has been designed by the Free Software Foundation (FSF). The GFDL was intended for manuals, textbooks, other reference and instructional materials, and documentation for GNU and open source software. However, it can be used for any text-based work of any subject matter. For example, Wikipedia uses the GFDL for all of its text.