Sharing and Creative Commons Licensing

Once you have created your book and chosen the formats that will work best for you and your students, the next step is to consider sharing it. There are many ways to share your work, and many questions to consider as you prepare your eBook. If you want to give others the choice to copy, share, edit, mix, keep or use your book, you will need to create a Creative Commons license, so that it is clear how you want your work to be used. Every Creative Commons license requires others to give you attribution when they use your work. In other words, you will always be cited as the creator of the content, and you can decide if your work can be adapted, made available for commercial or non-commercial uses, or shared on the same terms you have shared your own work.

Additionally, you can apply your Creative Commons license to your eBook using the Book Info tool in Pressbooks. By using this tool, you can access and edit the bibliographic information related to your eBook. One of the sections in this tool covers copyright. In the copyright section, you can assign a copyright holder, and select a Creative Commons license to apply to your work. It is not recommended that you type a copyright notice into the text box of this section. This text box will override any of the other copyright information you’ve already entered. Once you’ve applied this information, save the changes you’ve made. This will ensure that your Creative Commons license has been applied to your eBook.

If you are interested in learning more about copyright services, you can visit the copyright services at OSU website by clicking here. Additionally, more information can be found in the “Copyright Basics” section of Choosing and Using Sources: A Guide to Academic Research, created by University Libraries, which has also been made available in the Affordable Learning Exchange. This section can be accessed by clicking here.

If you are authoring an eBook using software other than Pressbooks, you can create a Creative Commons license for your work here.

This chart explains all of the options available with a Creative Commons license. A PDF version of this chart can be downloaded by clicking here.