Open Education (OE) Guide: How to Give Attribution

Open Washington Open Educational Resource Network has built a FREE to use attribution builder.

This Attribution Builder is a web tool to assist users of CC material to properly attribute.  It allows you to enter the Title, URL for work, Author and website, Organization, and CC license type and will provide attribution information which can be copied and pasted into your own work containing the CC material.  Here is an example of using the tool to provide its own attribution.

Your attributions could look this good!

“Open Attribution Builder” by Open Washington is licensed under CC BY 4.0

LICENSE CHOOSER: select the appropriate license for your work.

Do you know which license you need? Use this License Chooser to figure it out.

CONFUSED? NEED HELP?

WHAT ARE CREATIVE COMMONS LICENSES?

Where do you put the attribution? It depends!

• For text resources (eg. books, worksheets, PowerPoint slides, etc), include the attribution details where it naturally makes sense, such as immediately preceding or following the work, or as the footer along the bottom of the page on which the CC work appears.
• For videos, include the attribution information near the work as it appears on screen during the video.
• For sound recordings (eg podcasts), mention the name of the artist during the recording (like a radio announcement) and provide full attribution details in text near the podcast where it is being stored (eg. blog, school intranet, learning management system, etc).

How to Attribute a Creative Commons Licensed Work

A good rule of thumb is to recall the acronym TAL, which stands for Title, Author, and License.

• Title and Source – What is the name of the material? Please provide the title of the work you are adopting. Be sure to hyperlink the title to the original sources. If a hyperlink is not available, describe where you got the work.
• Author – Who owns the material? Please name the author or authors of the material in question. Sometimes, the licensor may want you to give credit to some other entity, like a company or pseudonym. In those cases, please just do what they request. Also, if the author has a webpage, please link to the author’s page.
• License – How can I use it? Please provide the exact name of the Creative Commons license under which the work was released, and hyperlink the license name to the license deed page. You can use the acronyms instead of full name of the license.

Fortunately, there are tools that can help you build the attribution text so you can simply copy and paste the text from the tool into your materials. See this Attribution Builder 

"Attributing OER" by The Open Education Consortium is licensed under CC BY 4.0

How to Give Attribution to Open Images

Here is a photo. Following is an example of how people might attribute it.

"A great day for geese" by Ann Fisher is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

The above attribution is an ideal attribution. It contains the:

Title: “A great day for geese”
Author: “Ann Fisher” – linked to her profile page
Image Source: “A great day for geese” – linked to original Flickr page
License: “CC BY 2.0” – linked to license deed

How to attribute material offered under a CC license

One particular question commonly asked is How do I properly attribute material offered under a Creative Commons license? 

• Look at the good and bad examples given from Best practices for attribution.

You can search for free high-resolution photos at Unsplash.com.

Information about using photos from Unsplash: License

It is real easy to give credit to the photographers on Unsplash. Look at the image below and how to give credit to a photograher at Unsplash.  Even though credit isn't required, Unsplash photographers appreciate a credit as it provides exposure to their work and encourages them to continue sharing. A credit can be as simple as adding their name with a link to their profile or photo:

Photo by MaggieLovesOrbit On Insta on Unsplash

Changing the Original Work in Any Way is a Derivative Work

Such as cropping an image, changing the colors or replacing words, you will be creating a derivative work of the original. You should always attribute the original work in any derivative work and identify that changes have been made to it.

Often the simplest way to do this is to use the phrase “Adapted from …” or “This work is a derivative of…” and attribute the original work as you would normally. If your work incorporates a number of derivative works, you might say, “Adapted from the following sources…” and list each original work sequentially.

Note: Keep in mind that materials that have the Non-Derivatives license term (CC-BY-ND, CC-BY-NC-ND)  are only allowed to be copied or redistributed as-is but NOT remixed.

• What Creative Commons licenses do.

1. The Creative Commons Wiki licensed under CC BY 4.0.
2. How to attribute Creative Commons licensed Materials by National Copyright Unit, Copyright Advisory Groups (Schools and TAFEs) licensed underCC BY 4.0
3. “Open Attribution Builder” by Open Washington, SBCTC licensed under CC BY 4.0