This policy outlines guidelines for Covered Individuals at Pitt Community College who are seeking to apply a Creative Commons (CC) license to open educational resources (OER) that they have created or adapted for use in their work or studies at the College. The policy aims to encourage Covered Individuals to share their educational resources openly while protecting the intellectual property rights of the College and the Covered Individual. It is the responsibility of the Covered Individual to make sure that proper attribution of adopted and/or adapted materials is given and that the licenses applied to adapted works grant permission for what the Covered Individual wants to do with the work(s).
In accordance with the Intellectual Property Policy set forth in the Employee Manual (Ownership of Intellectual Property, Policy Section IV. B.), “the College will own any and all Intellectual Property that is made, discovered, or created by a Covered Individual...”
While Pitt Community College will hold the copyright for any OER created and/or adapted by Covered Individuals, the content should be licensed for reuse with an appropriate Creative Commons license. We recommend the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY), which is the attribution-only license. This license is the most open and has the least possibility of having downstream effects that prevent users from using and adapting your materials. There are, however, many issues at play when choosing a license, and you should make choices based on your particular situation.
When seeking to apply a Creative Commons license to your work, all that is required is that you complete the College’s OER CC Licensing form (https://pittcc.libwizard.com/f/oer-cc-licensing).
The Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC) defines OER as teaching, learning, and research resources that are free of cost and access barriers, and which also carry legal permission for open use. Generally, this permission is granted by use of an open license (for example, Creative Commons licenses) which allows anyone to freely use, adapt and share the resource—anytime, anywhere. “Open” permissions are typically defined in terms of the “5R’s”: users are free to Retain, Reuse, Revise, Remix and Redistribute these educational materials.
Definition from SPARC Open Education licensed under a CC BY 4.0 International License.
Creative Commons licenses provide an easy way to manage the copyright terms that attach automatically to all creative material under copyright. The licenses allow that material to be shared and reused under terms that are flexible and legally sound. Creative Commons offers a core suite of six copyright licenses. Because there is no single “Creative Commons license,” it is important to identify which of the six licenses you are applying to your material, which of the six licenses has been applied to material that you intend to use, and in both cases the specific version. For more details about the individual licenses, visit https://creativecommons.org
Adapted from “What are Creative Commons licenses?” by Creative Commons – Frequently Asked Questions, which is licensed under a CC BY 4.0 International License.
Approved; Submitted via email to S. Robertson (PCC HR) for inclusion in the Employee Manual on August 2, 2024, by A. Davis (PCC Library), under the direction of L. Preast (PCC Assistant VP, Curriculum and Instruction).