In Unit 1, we introduced the background scans that the Research Consultant prepared for each team. The scans include both openly licensed and all-rights-reserved textbooks and curricula that already exist for your course. We asked you to look through half of the materials in Unit 1. In this unit you’ll finish working through the scan.

Now that you’ve learned more about open licenses, you’ll understand that you need to be familiar with the materials on the open content tab of your background scan in order to save time. Don’t reinvent the wheel – if someone else has shared content with permission for reuse, go ahead and reuse it!

However, it can feel overwhelming to digest all the materials in your background scan when you aren’t even quite sure what you’re looking for yet. To make it more manageable, return to the rating tool that you practiced with in Unit 1. You can continue to use this tool, or use columns M-R in the open content tab of your background scan as a shorthand. As you draft your team equity statement, you will be able to narrow down the elements in the rating tool that are most important to you. You might start with the scope and sequence, or look at course outcomes and chapter learning objectives, to see which materials you want to know more about.

You can read more strategically now that you understand how you’ll use existing open content and have a sense of what you’re scanning for. That’s why becoming familiar with the open content in your background scan is a priority in this unit.

What to Know About Commercial Content

You also need to be familiar with what’s already available via commercial textbook publishers in order to situate your work in the information landscape.

Commercial textbooks are published under all-rights-reserved copyright and we do not have permission to reuse the content. Further, we have a weak fair use argument for reproducing any of their content because our open publishing work directly undermines their market.

Even the outline and chapter structure of a commercial textbook may have copyright protection. In 2012, open textbook publisher Boundless was sued by three publishers – partially because Boundless copied the structure of their textbooks. The actual content of the Boundless books was openly licensed, but the structure was mapped from the publishers’ commercial books. The case was settled out of court, so it is not clear whether this was a violation of copyright law. That said, as an author you should be aware that it could be a legal risk to copy a commercial textbook’s structure.

One reason that the commercial materials are included in your background scan is for you to make sure you are differentiating your open textbook from the commercial offerings that are currently available.

Note: there may be instances where you’ll make use of all-rights-reserved copyrighted content in your curriculum (likely from sources that are not commercial textbooks). Quotes, summaries, and paraphrasing are standard academic writing practices that are covered by in-text and reference list citations when you use them. We’ll discuss what happens if you need to make use of all-rights-reserved content beyond standard academic practice in when we do revisions in Year 2.

For now, please focus on finding openly licensed content that you have clear permission to reuse with attribution.

Unit Self-Check Questions

Licenses and Attributions for Evaluate Open Materials in Background Scans, Continued

Open content, original

“Evaluate Open Materials in Background Scans, Continued” by Open Oregon Educational Resources is licensed under CC BY 4.0.

Open content, shared previously

Paragraph about Boundless lawsuit was adapted from Working with Authors to Develop Content Structure by the Open Education Network, licensed under CC BY 4.0.

Figure Y1 2.7. The Secret to my Productivity by vlogbrothers is licensed under CC BY 4.0.