Creating and Publishing New OER

Creating and publishing new OERs will always enrich the OER community. In this chapter, then, we want to provide professors with insights on how to create new OERs and a guide to open licenses for publishing them.

hands spread out with paint of different colors, giving the impression that the person was painting something

Image "Hands" by Amauri Mejía on Unsplash licensed under the Unsplash License

Because OERs are always open, you can manage and customize their content every year, every term or even in the midpoint of a course to supply your and your students' needs. Also, OERs can extend your academic profile, as you are creating the textbooks for your own classes. At the same time, you can offer more engaging and relevant materials for students: OERs can be shared digitally with videos, hyperlinks, and updates on what is new in every field. In addition, you help the students to reduce the cost of their textbooks, replacing at-cost material with a high-quality, free and open resource.

Many instructors get started with creating new OERs by opening up their syllabus. Opening up your syllabus can encourage fresh reflections on teaching practice and opportunities to include new or different perspectives on a subject. Then, ask yourself: what topics does my class cover? What do my notes say about those topics? What resources do I usually use? Which can I share? Which can I replace? Gather the information. These are the foundations of a new OER.

You do not have to create new OERs alone. In fact, OERs are often built collaboratively, not only among peers but also with the students. Mark Horner and Sarah Blyth from the Free High School Science Texts demonstrate in this document how to create open textbooks in a collaborative manner. The document is called How to collaboratively develop open-source textbooks (in hindsight!).

For example, in 2008, professor Jon Beasley-Murray from the University of British Columbia used Wikipedia in his class about Latin American dictatorship to empower students to share knowledge on the topic. They created three new articles and improved eight, which are now in Wikipedia and free to access.

The text was adapted from the BCOER Poster, by BCcampus, licensed under CC by 4.0

Considerations About Creating and Publishing New OERs

Make your OER accessible

From the beginning of your process, think about your students, as well as students and instructors outside your community. What are the best ways to make your materials accessible to as many students as possible? To do this, be mindful of the format you select for your OER. Not every person has the means to access all. You can find information about file formats in the Revising and Remixing OER section of this toolkit. Also, keep in mind that NYU has its own Digital Accessibility Checklist that you can check in order to build digital content and applications that can be used by people with disabilities. If you need more information about accessibility, you can check Deque's The Beginner's Guide to Web Accessibility or the University of British Columbia's OER Accessibility Toolkit.

Make it adaptable

For OERs to have maximum impact, consider creating and publishing your work in ways that can be edited by other people (instructors and students) around the world. For example, if you are working on an open textbook, separate your content by chapters and subchapters. In this way, it is easier to revise or remix single parts of a content without affecting the whole of the book. Also, sharing the editable version (.docx or Google Docs) of the document will solve many difficulties.

Publish it openly

NYU Libraries and NYU IT offer multiple web publishing platforms for those who are seeking to build new OERs or adapt existing ones for NYU courses.

For open textbooks, we recommend:

Manifold

- Manifold is an open-source publishing platform that supports rich media and iterative texts. Powerful annotation tools built into the reading interface enable teaching and learning through conversation. Manifold is great for compiling course readers, publishing course books, and creating student publications.

But you can also check:

Web Publishing

- A fast and easy way for faculty, staff, and students to create a WordPress website or blog in NYU’s custom environment.

Publishing OERs alone is not enough to make them discoverable. You may find it useful to submit your OER to major OER discovery platforms, like OER Commons or MERLOT. In our previous chapter, Finding OER, you can find a list of other external OER platforms.

Also, feel free to contact us at open.access@nyu.edu if you need any assistance making new OERs discoverable.

Soliciting Feedback

Look at our chapter on Evaluating OER and ask your peers to review the work. OERs are built by communities, so do not hesitate to ask for help. Remember to schedule regular update cycles to revisit your OER.

The text in "Considerations About Creating and Publishing New OERs" was adapted from the OER Toolkit, byColleges Libraries Ontario (CLO) and the Ontario Colleges Library Service (OCLS) in collaboration with the Institute for the Study of Knowledge Management in Education (ISKME), licensed under CC by 4.0

Licensing

In order for your OER to have maximum impact, its open permissions need to be clearly stated. Choose and clearly display the open license for your resources. Selecting a license then is the next step. Look up for one that enables other people to retain, revise, remix, reuse, and redistribute your new OER.

If you are using material that is not yours (images, videos, exercises), select the ones that are licensed for open sharing and reuse. If you are unsure of whether a resource is “open,” please always feel free to contact the NYU Libraries Scholarly Communications and Information Policy department (open.access@nyu.edu).

Video from The Council of Chief State School Officers, licensed under CC by 4.0

Creative Commons

We recommend Creative Commons licenses, as they are a simple, standardized way to share and use your OER on the conditions of your choice. You retain the copyright of your work while allowing others to work with them.

This table shows the types of licenses Creative Commons provides:

Licenses and Attribution	Description
CC BY	This license lets others distribute, remix, adapt, and build upon your work, even commercially, as long as they credit you for the original creation. It is recommended for maximum dissemination and use of licensed materials.
CC BY-SA (ShareAlike)	This license lets others remix, adapt, and build upon your work even for commercial purposes, as long as they credit you and license their new creations under identical terms. This license is often compared to “copyleft” free and open-source software licenses. All new works based on yours will carry the same license, so any derivatives will also allow commercial use. This is the license used by Wikipedia and is recommended for materials that would benefit from incorporating content from Wikipedia and similarly licensed projects.
CC BY-ND (NoDerivs)	This license lets others reuse the work for any purpose, including commercially; however, it cannot be shared with others in adapted form, and credit must be provided to you.
CC BY-NC (NonCommercial)	This license lets others remix, adapt, and build upon your work non-commercially, and although their new works must also acknowledge you and be non-commercial, they don’t have to license their derivative works on the same terms.
CC BY-NC-SA (NonCommercial-ShareAlike)	This license lets others remix, adapt, and build upon your work non-commercially, as long as they credit you and license their new creations under identical terms.
CC BY-NC-ND (NonCommercial-NoDerivs)	This license is the most restrictive of the six main licenses, only allowing others to download your works and share them with others as long as they credit you, but they can’t change them in any way or use them commercially