Open Educational Resources at the OSU Libraries
Open Educational Resources are freely accessible, usually open licensed documents and media that are useful for teaching, learning, educational, assessment and research purposes. (Source: Wikipedia)
To be considered open, a text must be licensed in a way that grants a baseline set of rights that are less restrictive than standard copyright. A license or list of permissions must be clearly stated by the author.
Generally, the minimum baseline rights allow users the following:
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to use the textbook without compensating the author
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to copy the textbook, with appopriate credit to the author
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to distribute the textbook non-commercially
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to shift the textbook into another format such as digital or print
Many authors also grant rights such as:
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to add, remove or alter content in the textbook, often on the condition that derivative works must have the same license
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to copy and distribute the textbook without giving credit to the author to use the textbook commercially