OER’s are damaging authors intellectual property and their profits

The Open Educational Resources’ idea is build upon high respect for both authors’ and users’ rights. Common use of Creative Commons (and other free licenses) for licensing open materials is a guarantee of precise information about rights and proper attribution. Authors on their own or customers buying resources (like government agencies or publishers) can decide if they want to publish them as OER’s. If so, they can negotiate wages for creation and rights as in traditional, closed publishing model. The only change, which affects only a small group of authors is that they cannot be paid in royalties as open licenses exclude that option (it is impossible, as free and open licenses are always free for end users).

In fact using Creative Commons licenses (which are non-exclusive) can protect authors rights even better the exclusive agreements with publishers restricting authors rights to reuse their own materials. Also, as scale of OER’s grows they become free resources to re-use that can replace paid materials.

Want to know more?

Shouldn’t I worry about ‘giving away’ my intellectual property? in. A Basic Guide to Open Educational Resources (OER), UNESCO, Commonwealth of Learning, 2011