Open Educational Resources (OER): Creative Commons Licensing

You can license your materials under a Creative Commons License by following these simple steps.  If you have any questions, visit the Creative Commons site, or contact Taylor St. Pierre at tstpierre@hartford.edu. 

Free does not always mean open.  A student at the University of Hartford using the databases to find articles is using a service that is free to them, but not truly free since they are paying for access to those journals in their tuition.  The databases are also not open because not just anyone can use those databases, you must be a student or affiliated with the University.

Open Educational Resources are by definition open, and many OER are also free, particularly those resources available online.  Creative Commons provides free, easy-to-use copyright licenses to ensure that the content is truly open.  Much of this has to do with the 5R copyright permissions that come with CC (or any open) licenses: Revise, Remix, Reuse, Redistribute, Retain.  For more information on these permissions you can visit:

For more information on Creative Commons Licensing, visit: