If you need to add figures in your chapter sections, first check to see if content already exists that you can use or adapt. Images that are available under Public Domain or Creative Commons licenses can be used with attribution. To find images that represent diverse people, visit Open Images [Website] on the Open Oregon Educational Resources website. This page collects repositories of openly licensed images with an emphasis on inclusion.

If you determine that the media you need does not already exist or that we don’t have permission to use it, then the next step is to make a media development request (covered in detail in Year 1, Unit 8).

1. The author identifies a media development need and takes notes in the Media Requests tab of the {Course #} Deliverables for Open Curriculum Development Model spreadsheet. Email the Project Manager right away to let them know you want to start a media development project.
2. The Project Manager reaches out to a Media Developer on the contact list whose skills align with the work needed.
3. The author, Project Manager, and Media Developer meet to clarify the project, including goals, scope, budget, design, and deliverables. Authors should come to this meeting with their idea described in detail and also be ready to adapt the concept based on the Media Developer’s input.
4. The Media Developer follows the agreed-upon timeline to receive feedback on a draft and complete a final project.
5. Authors should email the Project Manager to confirm that they integrated requested media. If the author isn’t able to complete integration by the handoff to the Revising Author at the end of Year 2, the author should email the Project Manager to ensure the Revising Author prioritizes integration.

All-rights-reserved Copyright Content in this Project

We expect that you will make use of all-rights-reserved copyrighted content in your curriculum. Quotes, summaries, and paraphrasing are standard academic writing practices that are covered by in-text and reference list citations when you use them. Citing credible sources – regardless of their copyright status – is encouraged and models what we want our students to do.

This section, rather, covers what happens if you need to make use of all-rights-reserved content beyond standard academic practice. Often this comes up in the context of media that authors want to include in their chapters.

Be prepared for the project support team to ask you whether it’s possible to find a replacement for all-rights-reserved copyrighted materials you might want to use. This is usually our first choice when creating open educational resources. Consider these strategies for avoiding use of all-rights-reserved copyrighted content:

• Choose open substitutes
• Create your own open materials
• Design assignments that teach the same concept

This may seem like a lot of work, but it protects you and Open Oregon Educational Resources from future copyright challenges, and it will also make your textbook more useful to others down the line.

If it’s not possible to find an alternative, then we’ll help you employ the strategies below.

Seek permission

Nonprofits and educators may be eager to have their resources included in your curriculum. Just ask them! The Research Consultant can help you identify the copyright holder and request permission for use in this project.

Content creators may say no to our request and ask for a licensing fee to use their work. The project usually does not pay commercial publishers to share their work with us under non-open licenses. As part of our commitment to equity, we prioritize paying licensing fees to historically underrepresented creators, nonprofits, and other individuals or groups that align with the equity approach of our project.

Fair use

You can sometimes use copyrighted works in your work through a principle known as fair use. In the U.S., whether or not something might be defended as fair use in court hinges on four factors:

1. The purpose of the use (transformative, non-profit, and educational uses may be more allowable)
2. The nature of the work
3. The amount taken
4. The impact on the market for the original.

Fair use is a good option for cases where it is impossible or unreasonable to substitute open content for all-rights-reserved content. However, downstream users of your work will need to make their own fair use determination if they decide to reuse that content. We can help you make a fair use assessment, and if you want to learn a lot more about how fair use applies to openly licensed works, see the Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Open Educational Resources [Website].

If we’ve asked for, but were denied, permission to use a work, then we usually advise you not to use a work against the wishes of the copyright holder under a fair use argument. It may be legal to do so, but it is likely unethical. This is particularly true if the person or organization that owns the copyright has a minoritized identity.

Linking out

Linking out is always okay from a copyright standpoint, because you’re just pointing to where the material is hosted. Including a link rather than the copyrighted content itself may be a solution if you want to include all-rights-reserved material that we don’t have permission to use.

But consider that every time you link out, you have the potential to lose your reader. Every link creates a decision point for the reader to either click on it or keep reading. As the author, you should try to make that decision so that the reader doesn’t have to. For every link, ask yourself these questions.

1. Is this link essential to student understanding?
2. If so, have I framed the link in a way that students know why it’s there and what to do with the information?
3. If not, can I delete it?

If you do choose to link out, keep these caveats in mind:

• Link to original sources, not republished or pirated material, in order to respect the intellectual property rights of authors and creators.
• If a resource is not accessible to people with disabilities, either don’t link to it or find a way to make it accessible.
• Check links periodically over the life of your work and be prepared to find a substitute if the content at a link disappears in the future.

You can learn more about best practices for linking out and accessibility in Year 1, Unit 6.

The Public Domain

Public domain materials come with no copyright restrictions. They include:

• Anything published 95 or more years ago.
• Many things published between 1929 and 1989, as shown in the chart Copyright Term and the Public Domain [Website].
• Content created by employees of the U.S. federal government and its agencies in the line of their work. Be cautious when federally funded materials have personal names or other institutions listed as well. These may not be clearly in the public domain. Check with the Research Consultant if you’re not sure.

Legally, you don’t need to attribute public domain materials, but, of course, attribution or citation is important for other reasons, including:

• Avoiding plagiarism. Even if a creator is no longer living, or is a government employee, giving credit is the right and professional thing to do.
• Being credible. Students are taught to think critically about source materials as part of college information literacy programs. Providing source information, where possible, bolsters your credibility and helps curious readers dive deeper.
• Tracking it down later. Keeping records of your sources also helps you. Sometimes you can use Google’s Reverse Image Search to track down an image source, but not always. It’s also more time-consuming than attributing sources right away.

Just because a work is not copyrighted does not mean it is credible or appropriate. Older works and government publications should include appropriate context, criticism, and commentary. Here are three examples of when you might use public domain materials:

1. Federal Agency Data. Federal agencies like the FBI [Website] and the Census Bureau [Website] are often cited as primary sources of criminal justice and demographic statistics. These agencies’ publications, including charts and reports, are in the public domain. But it’s also important to note the limitations of these sources. You might include alternative projects like Mapping Police Violence [Website], as well as critiques of government data, like an article from ProPublica on mislabeling hate crimes [Website].
2. Images of Historic People and Events. Images created 95 or more years ago are in the public domain. For example, Elizabeth Pearce and student contributors to Contemporary Families included public domain images of key historic people and events, including a portrait of journalist Ida B. Wells.
3. Public Domain Illustrations. In addition to photographs and charts, many projects also include illustrations. Many illustrators have dedicated their works to the public domain through a CC0 mark, including Pablo Stanley, creator of OpenPeeps [Website]. There are no legal restrictions on remixing or creating new works using public domain images.

Unit Self-Check Questions

Licenses and Attributions for Adding and Integrating Media

Open content, original

“Adding and Integrating Media” by Open Oregon Educational Resources is licensed under CC BY 4.0.

Open content, shared previously

“All-rights-reserved Copyright Content in this Project” is adapted from Strategies for When You Want to Use All Rights Reserved (“Copyrighted”) Materials by Michaela Willi Hooper and Kim Puttman for Open Oregon Educational Resources, licensed under CC BY 4.0.

“Fair use” is adapted from Fair Use by Open Oregon Educational Resources, licensed under CC BY 4.0.

“The Public Domain” is adapted from “The Public Domain and Why Remixing Matters” by Michaela Willi Hooper for Open Oregon Educational Resources, licensed under CC BY 4.0.