CCCS Faculty Toolkit

How to Attribute OER

All Creative Commons licenses require that users of the work attribute it (BY) the creator. This means you must give appropriate credit to the creator of the Creative Commons work you are using and any relevant citation or copyright information such as the source and license. This is a challenging but necessary process to using these CC materials.

You may use CC-licensed materials as long as you follow the license conditions. Attribution is one condition of all CC licenses; CC-BY.  Guidelines have changed so be aware of the CC license versions. CC license 4.0 versions is the most recent and is more user-friendly and more internationally robust.

Basic components of attribution

CC Commons recommends that attributions include the Title, Author, Source, and License. Whether you are sharing the work as-is or you have made an adaptation, an attribution should include these elements. It can be helpful to remember the acronym: TASL

• Title: Name or Title of the work should be included if a title was provided.
• Author: Creator of the work; this can be an author, an entity like a company or institution, a pseudonym instead of their real name, or in rare cases anonymous. Do what is requested by the license.
• Source: Include a URL or hyperlink to where the work resides
• License: Identify which CC license was applied to the work you are using. Each of the six different CC licenses come with distinct requirements for re-use. It is recommended that you name and provide a link to the license, e.g. CC-BY 4.0 for work licensed under CC-BY 4.0.

"Consider also including "disclaimer of warranties", which clarifies that the author makes no representations or warranties about the non-infringement or absence of other defects concerning the CC-licensed work. In plain English, this means that the users will use the work at their own risk.

In summary, if the creator or license holder has any information related to TASL, consider including it in your attribution. It is also recommended to provide links to the Title, Author, Source, and License, where possible, so future users can easily access the information they need on a work and the license terms."

Examples

Openly-licensed text/book sample attribution:
The OER Starter Kit by Abbey K. Elder is licensed under CC BY 4.0.

Openly-licensed image sample attribution:
"Creative Commons 10th birthday Celebration San Francisco" by Timothy Vollmer is licensed under CC BY 2.0

Public domain materials sample attribution:
"Young Woman with a Water Pitcher" by Vermeer. The Marquand Collection. The image is dedicated to the public domain under CC0.

For more examples of good and not-so-good attribution statements, see "Recommended Practices for Attribution" on the Creative Commons Wiki.
For more information about attribution, see Footnotes: Appropriate Credit

Selection from "Creative Commons Free Photos for Bloggers: The Ultimate Guide" by foter.com used under CC-BY-SA 3.0.

Once you have the required elements (TASL), you can plug them into the Open Attribution Builder from Open Washington and generate a quick attribution result, including derivative and public domain works.

Citations vs Attributions

Citations and attribution are similar concepts in that the both aim to give proper credit to others. Citations give credit to copyrighted materials when you use someone else's ideas or words in your own work. Attributions give credit when you reuse, revise, reproduce, retain, or redistribute someone else's openly licensed work. Citations help you avoid plagiarism while attributions fulfill a legal requirement.