Skip to Main Content

Open Educational Resources @ The University of Baltimore

Adapted with permission from Carrie Gits, Austin Community College

Determining Whether or Not It is OER

Not all educational materials available under a Creative Commons (CC) license are OER. Here is a handy graphic that shows which CC licenses are good for open educational resources, and which are not. OER related to Creative Commons licenses graphic

"The easiest way to confirm that an education resource is an open education resource that provides you with the 5R permissions is to determine that the resource has been licensed under a Creative Commons license (or is in the public domain) that permits the creation of derivative works (i.e, allows revisions). Any of these CC licenses are OER-compatible: CC BY, CC BY-SA, CC BY-NC, or CC BY-NC-SA.

The two CC NoDerivatives (ND) licenses are not OER-compatible licenses because they do not allow the public to revise or remix an education resource. Because the ND licenses do not meet the 5Rs or any of the major OER definitions, the open education movement does not call ND-licensed education resources 'OER' " (Green, 2018).