Now that the OER you have created is complete, you are ready to publish it and distribute it to your learners. However, it is always a good practice to ask someone to peer-review your work before making it available.  

Peer Review

Peer review ensures a certain level of quality and integrity of your work. You can always refer to your colleagues and ask them to peer review your work, reach out to subject matter experts in your discipline outside your organization, or seek professional copyediting and layout of your publications.

License Your Work

Once the peer review is done, decide which creative license you want to use and which platform and share your valuable contribution with the world. Ideally, to be considered as an OER, it is always recommended to apply a Creative Commons license that allows other to practice the 5Rs: Reuse, Retain, Revise, Remix, and Redistribute. For this reason consider releasing your work under a CC-BY 4.0 International license.

The subsequent sections and chart provide a clear idea on what Creative Licenses are and what each license allow others to do with your work. 

Creative Commons is a nonprofit organization that enables the sharing and use of creativity and knowledge through free legal tools.

Their free, easy-to-use copyright licenses provide a simple, standardized way to give the public permission to share and use your creative work — on conditions of your choice. CC licenses let you easily change your copyright terms from the default of “all rights reserved” to “some rights reserved.”

Creative Commons licenses are not an alternative to copyright. They work alongside copyright and enable you to modify your copyright terms to best suit your needs.

Text adapted from Creative Commons website which is licensed under a CC BY 4.0 International License.

Use Creative Commons tools to help you decide which license to use to share your work.

The free and easy-to-use copyright licenses provide a simple, standardized way to give your permission to share and use your creative work— on conditions of your choice. You can adopt one of our licenses by sharing on a platform, or choosing a license below.

Here's a list of additional platforms recommended by Creative Commons which provide users with the option of licensing works with CC licenses.