The UK's Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) is funding a support project on intellectual property rights (IPR) and licensing issues for Open Educational Resources in partnership with the Higher Education Academy.
The latest addition to the organisations' suite of support resources is a new tool - the Risk Management Calculator - designed to help understand levels of risk associated with publishing open educational materials. Typical examples of this might include materials which are still in copyright, but for which the rights holders cannot be traced or are unknown (so called "Orphan Works"). The calculator helps those relatively new to licensing to make the right decisions when creating open content.
As more and more open content finds its way online, licensing and rights have become a key issue on a global level, it has been observed. More and more organisations are realising the benefits of releasing their content under Creative Commons Licences, or similar open content licences such as the Open Government Licence, which explicitly grant the end-user permission to use materials, modify or redistribute them. Institutions like the British Library are releasing their bibliographic records to be reused without attribution and Creative Commons Licences are increasingly used by developing countries to open up content.
The JISC team will be demonstrating the Risk Management Calculator at the JISC Conference in March.
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