The global health crisis is crystalizing the need for policies that support universal access to learning resources

The COVID-19 pandemic has wreaked havoc on over a billion learners’ lives—half of the world’s student population have seen their schools or universities close to slow the spread of the virus. As a result, many educational institutions are shifting to online learning. While some educators can post their existing learning materials online for their students, for others, the move to online requires access to, and the legal rights to perpetually use and adapt materials developed by others. This brings into focus the essential need for both broad access to Open Educational Resources (OER) and broad limitations and exceptions (L&E) for educators and learners to freely and legally use copyright works for educational purposes.

Open Educational Resources (OER) are teaching, learning, and research materials, in any medium, that reside in the public domain or have been released under an open license that permits no-cost access, adaptation and redistribution by others.

Limitations and Exceptions (L&E) for Education make it possible to use protected works for educational purposes without the authorization of the copyright holder (with or without payment of compensation). L&E exist to maintain an appropriate balance between the interests of rights holders and users of protected works. Education-related L&E vary across jurisdictions and generally permit certain specific uses linked to study, teaching, private or personal use, and quotation. In some countries, these uses are allowed under the doctrine of fair dealing or fair use. They usually apply in relation to the rights of reproduction, publication, performance, and communication (including online communication), as well as to the implementation of technological protection measures. Certain laws provide for compulsory licenses for reproduction and adaptation for educational purposes. Users and authors alike stand to gain from the application of L&E and of policies that aim to leverage copyright for education.

Guided by its mission to build a more equitable, accessible, and innovative world, Creative Commons has long been advocating for open education as well as providing the legal infrastructure to support the creation, sharing and use of OER. We have also advocated for broadening limitations and exceptions to copyright materials for educational use. 

When access to education is a daily struggle

For many learners and educators, especially in low-income countries, access to educational materials is a daily struggle, even in normal times. Because of a myriad of barriers, such as the prohibitive cost of learning resources, or the legal maze of convoluted copyright rules and exceptions, many learners are denied their fundamental human right to education.

On many levels, the current health emergency and the disruptions it creates around learning opportunities is a wake-up moment. Librarians are calling for a generous interpretation of fair use, educators and institutions are generously sharing OER, and commercial publishers are making some of their educational materials available for free for a limited time.

Helping teachers and learners legally access effective learning resources is certainly useful during a global health crisis; it is similarly required after the crisis. Open education is not a short-term fix to a passing problem—it is a long-term solution to ensuring equitable, inclusive access to effective educational resources and learning opportunities. 

In the same way open science is better science (the world is sharing COVID-19 research to create a vaccine), open education is better education. While the crisis didn’t make this so, it does remind us that we all need to be smarter and more responsible with the limited resources we have so we can add resilience to the education systems on which the world’s children depend.

Now is the time for governments to adopt open education policies and limitations and exceptions for education

There is an opportunity in this crisis to collectively realize and acknowledge that public education systems globally can do better.

Open education policies ensure the content created or procured with public money is either CC licensed or dedicated to the public domain, so the public that paid for the educational resource has access to the resource. The UNESCO OER Recommendation calls on governments to: 

• develop and implement policies and/or regulatory frameworks which encourage that educational resources developed with public funds be openly licensed or dedicated to the public domain as appropriate, and allocating financial and human resources for the implementation and evaluation of policies;
• develop mechanisms to support and incentivize all stakeholders to publish source files and accessible OER using standard open file formats in public repositories; and
• embed OER policies into national policy frameworks and strategies and aligning them with other open policies and guiding principles such as those for Open Access, Open Data, Open Source Software and Open Science.

Creative Commons has joined the Dynamic Coalition for the UNESCO OER Recommendation and a network of open education NGOs to support national governments in creating, adopting and implementing these and other open education policies.

Broad limitations and exceptions allow educators and learners to legally access and use copyright resources for educational purposes, without authorization from the rights holders. 

At the international level, the WIPO Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights is the forum where discussions on substantive issues in the field of copyright and related rights take place. L&E have been on the SCCR agenda since 2004 and, in addition to educational activities, discussions on L&E focus on libraries and archives as well as disabled persons, particularly visually impaired persons (as recognized under the 2013 Marrakesh Treaty). Creative Commons is actively involved in WIPO-related work and has presented an official statement to the SCCR on L&E. 

Through our policy work at CC, we support legal and policy initiatives (global, regional and national) that aim to adapt an obsolete copyright system to the digital environment. That involves making sure users can benefit from broad and clear L&E for online uses, and, specifically in the context of online education, that educators and learners can take advantage of the possibilities offered by digital technologies to have a positive educational experience without undue impediments imposed by unwarranted, outdated, or unfit copyright rules.

How can you learn about open education and increase access to effective learning resources?

• Make your educational resources OER by adding a CC license or dedicating it to the public domain. You are just a few clicks away from making your resources available, worldwide.
• Read and sign the Cape Town Declaration.
• Read the UNESCO OER Declaration and Recommendation.
• Connect with over 1000 open education leaders from 75+ countries by joining the CC Open Education Platform.
• Take part in efforts to expand L&E globally and in your country / region by joining the CC Copyright Reform Platform. 
• Encourage the use of CC Search to find open images that you can freely use in your learning materials.
• Review, use and contribute to the COVID-19 Open Education Community Contributed Resources.
• Join the International OER Advocacy list to learn about and help with open education and L&E policy initiatives.

Up your open licensing skills with free, CC BY licensed CC Certificate OER, or register for the online facilitated course to get “CC Certified.”

Stop the spread of COVID-19 by taking these steps outlined by the WHO, including washing your hands for at least 20 seconds and social distancing.

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In response to the global health emergency caused by COVID-19, we’ve seen an array of organizations, publications, and governments make COVID-19 related research open access. For example, the U.S. National Library of Medicine recently released the COVID-19 Open Research Dataset (CORD-19)—a machine-readable coronavirus literature collection with over 29,000 articles available for text and data mining (TDM). 

These actions are not surprising given the urgency of the current situation. In our previous post, “Now Is the Time for Open Access Policies—Here’s Why” we explain that rapid and unrestricted access to scientific research and educational materials is necessary to overcome this crisis. However, while we applaud the recent moves by organizations, publishers, and governments to open access to scientific research related to COVID-19, we believe the same level of sharing should be applied to all scientific research. Not only for the public good, but also for the good of science. Science can only function properly if results, data, and insights are made openly available. “Universality is a fundamental principle of science,” explains the open access consortium cOAlition S, “only results that can be discussed, challenged, and, where appropriate, tested and reproduced by others qualify as scientific.”

Put simply, open science is the best way to do science. This is why CC has consistently recommended the following best practices for sharing research openly:

• Zero embargo period so the public has immediate access 
• CC BY on the article so it’s available for TDM
• CC0 on the research data so other scientists can scrutinize the conclusions, replicate the study, and advance the science

In order to examine this issue further, as well as provide some guidance for scientific researchers and organizations specifically, we reached out to intellectual property and copyright law expert Dr. Lucie Guibault, an associate professor at the Schulich School of Law and associate director of the Law & Technology Institute at Dalhousie University.

Our conversation below is slightly edited for clarity and length. 

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CC: Why does open access to scientific research and data matter in moments of crisis?

Dr. Guibault: When time is of the essence, like now with the COVID-19 pandemic, scientific research results must be made available as soon as possible so that other scientists, policymakers and the general population can rely on sound scientific data in their decision-making process. Contrary to the traditional publishing model, which puts scientific publications behind a paywall or puts a 6 to 12-month embargo on self-archiving (depositing scholarly research in an online repository or open archive), open access allows for immediate, worldwide access to scientific and scholarly publications. Actions based on new findings can be immediate. For example, open access to a broad corpus of articles can certainly help reduce duplication of work, but most of all it enables easy text and data mining (TDM) which leads to new insights and knowledge. Through TDM scientists can make predictions on where a virus will emerge, when it might peak, what drug might work, etc.

CC: Why do you think organizations are adopting open access policies and actions in response to this crisis?

Dr. Guibault: It must be because, in their line of activity, these organizations have discovered the tremendous advantage of having immediate, free access to current, replicable, reliable, verifiable scientific results upon which they can base sound and informed decisions. This would most likely not be possible if the vital research results were not made available under open access conditions, as the alternative is either to pay for access, to wait for the expiration of the embargo period, or to base their decision on less reliable sources.

CC: If an organization is interested in adopting an open access policy, what are the steps they need to take?

Dr. Guibault: Institutions should become more familiar with open access policy documents before making decisions about it. Administrators should read on and about the Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities, the Budapest Open Access Initiative and the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment. Once they know more about the issue, they should consider adhering to these three declarations. The next step is to develop a realistic implementation strategy.

CC: What advice would you give to researchers who are unaware or unsure about open access?

Dr. Guibault: Individual researchers who are unaware or unsure about open access should try to become familiar with the advantages and drawbacks of open access. Of course, it’s easier for a researcher if their institution has adhered to the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment because it guarantees that the researcher’s individual efforts in publishing articles and releasing data under open access conditions will be rewarded. When the institution employing the researcher has no clear open access policy, researchers may be more hesitant to publish in open access journals, especially if high author processing charges are involved. Nevertheless, they should at least endeavor to always self-archive their publications.

CC: What impact do you think the COVID-19 crisis will have on open access policies? 

Dr. Guibault: Open access is in itself such a worthwhile goal that it shouldn’t need a catastrophe like the COVID-19 virus to push it forward. But if it did, it would be a very small consolation.

For guidance on implementing an open access policy or using the CC License Suite, please contact us at info@creativecommons.org—we’re here to help. 

Stop the spread of COVID-19 by taking these steps outlined by the WHO, including washing your hands for at least 20 seconds and social distancing.

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We are proud to announce that Creative Commons (CC) will once again be participating as a mentoring organization for Google Summer of Code (GSoC) and Outreachy.

GSoC and Outreachy are both programs focused on introducing open-source software development to a wider audience. They provide stipends to work on a 3-month project for the open source community. GSoC is open to all university students whereas Outreachy recruits anyone who faces under-representation, systemic bias, or discrimination in the technology industry of their country.

CC has had great success with GSoC and Outreachy in the past. We’ve mentored for GSoC in eight previous years, and with the help of last year’s interns, we were able to release our WordPress plugin, the CC Search browser extension, The Linked Commons, and Vocabulary, as well as rewrite our license chooser tool. Our interns from Outreachy’s December 2019 to March 2020 round just wrapped up their work, making improvements to the new version of the license chooser and Vocabulary, and creating a new version of our Platform Toolkit.

We’ve compiled a list of project ideas for students to choose from when submitting their work proposal. These range from improvements to CC Search and adding sources to CC Catalog, to building on previous projects like Vocabulary and the Linked Commons. There is room for creativity—the project ideas are defined in broad terms and applicants may choose to submit a proposal for an original idea.

If you’d like to stay updated on the work we’re doing, please join our developer community or follow our technical blog. And of course, we encourage you to read our applicant guide and submit a proposal if you’re eligible! It’s a great way to get an introduction to open source software, build real-world skills, work on interesting technical challenges, and help advance CC’s mission.

The deadline to apply for Google Summer of Code is March 31 and the deadline to apply for Outreachy is April 7.

To stay up-to-date on the latest tech developments and resources, follow @cc_opensource on Twitter and visit the CC Open Source website!

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Over the weekend, news emerged that upset even the most ardent skeptics of open access. Under the headline, “Trump vs Berlin” the German newspaper Welt am Sonntag reported that President Trump offered $1 billion USD to the German biopharmaceutical company CureVac to secure their COVID-19 vaccine “only for the United States.”

In response, Jens Spahn, the German health minister said such a deal was completely “off the table” and Peter Altmaier, the German economic minister replied, “Germany is not for sale.” Open science advocates were especially infuriated. Professor Lorraine Leeson of Trinity College Dublin, for example, tweeted, “This is NOT the time for this kind of behavior—it flies in the face of the #OpenScience work that is helping us respond meaningfully right now. This is the time for solidarity, not exclusivity.” The White House and CureVac have since denied the report. 

Today, we find ourselves at a pivotal moment in history—we must cooperate effectively to respond to an unprecedented global health emergency. The mantra, “when we share, everyone wins” applies now more than ever. With this in mind, we felt it imperative to underscore the importance of open access, specifically open science, in times of crisis.

Why open access matters, especially during a global health emergency 

One of the most important components of maintaining global health, specifically in the face of urgent threats, is the creation and dissemination of reliable, up-to-date scientific information to the public, government officials, humanitarian and health workers, as well as scientists.

Several scientific research funders like the Gates Foundation, the Hewlett Foundation, and the Wellcome Trust have long-standing open access policies and some have now called for increased efforts to share COVID-19 related research rapidly and openly to curb the outbreak. By licensing material under a CC BY-NC-SA license, the World Health Organization (WHO) is adopting a more conservative approach to open access that falls short of what the scientific community urgently needs in order to access and build upon critical information. 

All publicly funded organizations should: 1) Adopt open access policies that require publicly funded research to be made available under an open license (e.g. CC BY 4.0) or dedicated to the public domain. In practice, this means research articles and data can be freely reused by others, thereby enhancing collaboration among scientists and accelerating the pace of discovery. 2) Ensure all educational resources (such as videos, infographics and other media tools) are also openly licensed to facilitate dissemination of reliable, practical information to the public.

The current race to find a vaccine for COVID-19 exemplifies why rapid and unrestricted access to scientific research and educational materials is vital in the most open terms possible. Due to the very nature of the illness, including the fact that it was completely unknown to scientists before the outbreak and is now global, it’s impossible for just one organization, institution, and/or government to tackle this crisis alone. In fact, current global efforts to find a vaccine for COVID-19 wouldn’t be possible without Chinese health officials and researchers initially sharing critical information on the nature of the virus in December 2019.  

We find ourselves at a pivotal moment in history—we must cooperate effectively to respond to an unprecedented global health emergency. The mantra, “when we share, everyone wins” applies now more than ever.

With cases of COVID-19 quickly surpassing 200,000 globally, there is a growing urgency for the entire scientific community to work together with health officials worldwide to find and make available treatments and vaccines. On March 13, government science advisors from 12 countries published an open letter asking publishers to make scientific research and data on COVID-19 open access. “Given the urgency of the situation,” the letter said, “it is particularly important that scientists and the public can access research outcomes as soon as possible.” Additionally, educational materials made available by intergovernmental organizations such as the WHO should be made openly available without any restrictions—this is not only necessary in this global emergency, but is consistent with their public mission and mandate.

Before this open letter was published, many scientists had already begun making their work and data open access using preprint platforms like bioRxiv, ArXiv, and Gisaid. This past week, the nonprofit organization Free Read received over 32,000 signatures on its petition to “unlock coronavirus research.” In response, publishers like Elsevier, Oxford University Press, Springer Nature, and The Lancet began removing paywalls from COVID-19 related articles. Media outlets across the world, including the New York Times, Bloomberg, The Atlantic, Clarin, Publico, Globo, and Folha are also removing paywalls from their COVID-19 content. Individual scientists, in collaboration with media outlets, have even started to release informative graphics communicating complex scientific concepts under open licenses. For example, this GIF by infectious disease expert Dr. Siouxsie Wiles illustrating how we can “flatten the curve” was released under a Creative Commons Attribution license (CC BY-SA 4.0).

Many open science advocates applaud these efforts to open access to scientific research on COVID-19, but they argue this is something we should’ve been doing all along. Michael Eisen, a biologist at UC Berkeley and editor of the open-access science journal eLife told WIRED, “Of course this should be the default for ALL science, not just COVID-19 science, and it should have been the default for the past 25 years. But I’m glad to see this happening now.”

On its website, Plan S argues that paywalls withhold a “substantial amount of research results from a large fraction of the scientific community and from society as a whole.” This, in turn, “hinders the scientific enterprise in its very foundations and hampers its uptake by society.” For example, researchers examining the 2014 Ebola outbreak in West Africa found that access to vital knowledge about the virus and the risk factors prior to the outbreak was inhibited by publisher paywalls. They wrote, “Although access to knowledge would not of itself have prevented or averted the Ebola epidemic, better-informed health officials might have taken timely preventive measures and been better equipped to mitigate risks during and after the outbreak.” 

Now’s the time to implement and improve open access policies

For these reasons, Creative Commons (CC) has urged the adoption of open access policies by organizations and governments, such as UK Research and Innovation (UKRI). CC is preparing comments to inform UKRI’s consultation process on its proposed open access policy and will soon be sharing similar comments in response to the U.S. Federal Register’s request for information on “Public Access to Peer-Reviewed Scholarly Publications, Data, and Code Resulting From Federally Funded Research.” 

CC Licenses have become the international standard in open licensing, and after supporting successful efforts in the creation, adoption, and implementation of open access policies with various governments and institutions, we continue to strongly advocate for open access for the benefit of researchers, industry and the general public. This includes making all information funded by international organizations or national governments available for the broadest reuse. Additionally, CC embraces efforts to clarify how fair use applies in these exceptional circumstances, such as the Public Statement of Library Copyright Specialists: Fair Use & Emergency Remote Teaching & Research. This resource was recently published by a group of expert copyright librarians from colleges and universities across the U.S., including the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

For guidance on implementing an open access policy or using the CC License Suite, please contact us at info@creativecommons.org—we’re here to help. 

Stop the spread of COVID-19 by taking these steps outlined by the WHO, including washing your hands for at least 20 seconds and social distancing.

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Last week, the Unicode Consortium released the latest version of the Unicode Standard—the universal character coding system used in computer processing (which includes the international emoji portfolio ). We’re thrilled to announce that Creative Commons (CC) license symbols were included in this new release.

The latest Unicode Standard adds 5,930 characters, including 4 new scripts, 55 new emoji characters, and the following CC license symbols:

This is the result of years of hard work by several members of CC’s staff, including our former Director of Product and Research Jane Park who submitted our initial proposal in October 2016 and our second proposal in July 2017.

What is Unicode?

Unicode is the standard for encoding characters into text. Typical examples of encoded characters that we use every day are @, $, &, #, and %. Other examples are writing scripts, like Arabic (العربية) or Devanagari (देवनागरी). Due to the nature of the internet, more characters are created every day—like the mechanical arm emoji —so the Unicode Standard must be regularly updated. 

Put simply, the Unicode Standard enables virtually all text-based editing platforms and tools  (e.g. WordPress, Gmail, Twitter, etc.) to use the same characters and symbols.

Why we proposed adding CC license symbols to Unicode

Way back in 2017, we surveyed more than 700 people to understand how they marked their works with CC licenses. We found that more than half (62%) use the CC license icons or buttons, which must be downloaded from our website or made accessible via an external plugin (e.g. CC WordPress Plugin). However, many more (96%) said they would like to be able to place the CC license symbols directly in their text to indicate the particular CC license being applied—hence the need for our proposal.

Font developers—please be sure to include the CC symbols in your fonts! With the CC license symbols being added to the Unicode Standard, you can help make it much easier for people to mark their work with a CC license.

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