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Creative Commons Licenses: Benefits and Implications in Teaching and

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Article

Research Journal
Creative Commons Licenses: Social Sciences,
28 (1,2&3) 1-21
Benefits and Implications in ©2020 Panjab University
Chandigarh-160 014 India
Teaching and Research ISSN 0251-348X

Pradeep Kumar Misra*

Abstract
Educational resources, both published and unpublished, are an
integral part of teaching and research. Copyright of such
resources, whether published or unpublished, belongs to the
creator or author. And the acquisition and use of copyrighted
materials depend on payment to and permission from the author
or creator. In comparison, the educational resources released
under creative commons licenses are free of cost and available
online. Anyone with an internet connection can access the
resources released with creative commons licenses and use them in
many ways. Against this backdrop, the present paper discusses the
philosophy of copyrighted and open access educational resources
and details about different creative commons licenses. Afterward,
the paper details the four popular by-products of creative
commons licenses, i.e., OpenEducational Resources (OER), Open
Access Publications (OAP), Open Access Journals (OAJ), and
Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs). In the end, the paper
specifies several benefits and implications of using educational

*Professor, Department of Education, CCS University, Meerut.

Research Journal Social Sciences, 28, 1,2 & 3 (2020) : 195-215

196 Pradeep Kumar Misra

resources released under creative commons for teaching and

research purposes.

Keywords: Creative Commons, Creative Commons Licenses,

Open Access, Open Educational Resources (OER), Open Access
Publications (OAP), Open Access Journals (OAJ), Massive Open
Online Courses (MOOCs), Teaching, Research

Background
The term 'copyright' is an integral part of the day-to-day lives of
teachers and researchers. When ever they use any work from an
author or researcher, the first question arises in their mind that
whether they are authorized to use and share it or not. By default,
creative works like literary, dramatic, musical, or artistic work, a
cinematograph film, or a sound recording are copyrighted works.
Copyright is a legal concept that gives creators the right to assert
ownership over their creative works. Copyright applies to any
"creative" work and prevents other people from taking and using it
without their permission (McNulty, 2016). As defined by the
Copyright Act, 1957 of India,
Copyright is a right given by the law to creators of literary,
dramatic, musical and artistic works and producers of
cinematograph films and sound recordings. In fact, it is a
bundle of rights including, inter alia, rights of
reproduction, communication to the public, adaptation
and translation of the work(Ministry of Commerce and
Industry, n.d., para1).
Similarly, World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO, n.d.)
clarifies that 'Copyright (or author's right) is a legal term used to
describe the rights that creators have over their literary and artistic
works. Works covered by copyright range from books, music,
paintings, sculpture, and films, to computer programs, databases,
advertisements, maps, and technical drawings.'According to the
Berne Convention, copyright protection is obtained automatically
without any registration or other formalities. This provision

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Creative Commons Licenses: Benefits and Implications in 197
Teaching and Research

means, once a person creates or authors any work, it is copyrighted

automatically. And as a copyright holder of the work, one has the
sole rights of its reproduction, distribution, rental and importation,
public performance, broadcasting, communication to the public,
and making available to the public (WIPO, 2016).
One can use any copyrighted work either with the proper
consent of the author/creator or after paying the specified amount
to the author/creator.As a fact, a copyright ensures certain
minimum safeguards of the rights of authors over their creations.
Although, there are few exceptions to copyright protection like it
can be used for 'a fair deal for research, study, criticism, review
and news reporting, as well as use of works in library and schools
and in the legislatures, without specific permission of the
copyright owners (Ministry of Commerce and Industry, n.d.,
para5).'
Usually, every author/creator feels happy to have a copyright
of the work and say about its use by others. At the same time, every
author/creator does not want to restrict the use of the work or
want money from users. Many authors/creators only want that
users must attribute them to their work and nothing else.
Generally, many authors/creators want to retain the copyright of
their work but do not want to restrict its use by granting
permissions or charging money. For such authors/creators, a
viable alternative is a licensing framework offered by Creative
Commons, a self-defined “non-profit organization that enables the
sharing and use of creativity and knowledge through free legal
tools” (McNulty, 2016, para 4). The website of Creative Commons
(2021) details that,
The Creative Commons copyright licenses and tools forge
a balance inside the traditional “all rights reserved”
setting that copyright law creates. Our tools give everyone
from individual creators to large companies and
institutions a simple, standardized way to grant copyright
permissions to their creative work. The combination of our
tools and our users is a vast and growing digital commons,

Research Journal Social Sciences, 28, 1,2 & 3 (2020) : 195-215

198 Pradeep Kumar Misra

a pool of content that can be copied, distributed, edited,

remixed, and built upon, all within the boundaries of
copyright law (para 1).
Creative common (CC) licenses are a mechanism for
authors/creatorsto decide that what other users can do with their
works available in the public domain. In copyright works,users
need to ask permission from the copyright owner
(author/publisher) regarding the use of the work. Whereas, in the
case of resources released under CC licenses, the author/publisher
grants permission in advance regarding modalities of use of the
work. Table-1 presents a comparison of copyright works and
works released under creative commons.
Table 1
A Comparison of Copyright andCC Licensed Works
CopyrightWorks CC Licensed Works
?Restrictive in nature ?Open in nature
?Based on the philosophy that any ?Based on the philosophy that any
creation is a by-product of individuals creation is a by-product of collective
knowledge or skills knowledge or skills
?Supported by the argument that the ?Supported by the argument that helping
authors/creators needs reward in others for free is itself a reward for any
monetary terms for their efforts author/creator
?The authors/creators arerewarded in ?The authors/creatorsare rewarded in
terms of royalties/payments for their terms of the mass-circulationof their
works works
?The permission for use of the work has to ?All the permissionsrelated to the use of
be obtained from the author/creator works are given in advance
?Only the author/publisher is authorized ?Everyone is authorized to share,
to distribute or share the work distribute, and store the work
?The users have to pay money to access ?The users can access the work free of cost
the work
?The users are allowed to make changes
?The usersare not authorized to edit or and remix under specific provisions
make any changes
?Authors/creators can anytime change the
?Authors/creators face difficulties to nature of usage rights of their works
change the usage rights of their works
?The workshave visible identification in
?The copyright works may have or may form of text or image licenses
not have any visible identification

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Creative Commons Licenses: Benefits and Implications in 199
Teaching and Research

Creative Commons Licenses

Creative Commons licenses are public licenses, and
authors/creatorsdo not need any permission from anyone or make
any payment to anyone, to use these licenses in their works. The
Creative Commons licenses are indicated by CC rather than the
traditional C and are popularly known as open licenses. The
Creative Commons website lists the following six different types of
CC licenses for the use of authors or creators.
?
Attribution (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. This is the most accommodating of licenses
offered.
?
Attribution-ShareAlike (CC BY-SA) – 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 the 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.
?
Attribution-NoDerivs (CC BY-ND) – 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.
?
Attribution-NonCommercial (CC BY-NC) – 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.
?
Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike (CC BY-NC-SA)
– 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 the identical terms.

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200 Pradeep Kumar Misra

?
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs (CC BY-NC-ND)
– This license is the most restrictive of our 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.
The common feature of all these licenses is that each license, at
least, allows others to copy the released works, share them with
others, and use them by attributing the author. Most importantly,
these licenses allow authors to give the right to users to distribute,
remix, tweak and build upon the content of their work as per their
choice and wish. Authors or creators are free to decide and select
any one license, from six different types of CC licenses, as per their
philosophy and liking.
The use of these licenses is easy. Those who would like to
release their works under CC have to visit the 'share your work'
section of the creative commons site. On this page, authors are
shown different options to choose the appropriate license.
Afterward, the chosen license is made visible in image and text
form. For example, an authoropts for Attribution-
NonCommercial-ShareAlike (CC BY-NC-SA) license, it will
appear on the webpage of creative commons in the form of an
image and a write-up:

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-

NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
The author/creator can copy this image or text or both.
Afterward, the author has to paste it on the front page or content
description page of the resource. Putting one of these licenses
means the work is available under CC. The authors can use CC
licenses in any work like text, video, animation, etc. Regarding

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Creative Commons Licenses: Benefits and Implications in 201
Teaching and Research

audio resources, the producers have to declare in the beginning

that the program is released under a CC license.

Initiatives based on CC Licenses: OER, OAP, OAJ, and MOOCs

CC licenses greatly supported the open access moment and
brought a paradigm shift in the world of teaching and research.
Since the advent of the term 'open access' at a meeting in Budapest
in 2002 (Budapest Open Access Initiative, 2002),many individuals,
institutions, and organizationsare offering free unrestricted access
to their educational resources and scientific publications. And the
CC licenses helped immensely in this cause. The educationists,
researchers, and organizations have used CC licenses to take many
initiatives for freely sharing and disseminating their works.
Among these, four initiatives that have significantly contributed to
the world of teaching and research are Open Educational
Resources (OER), Open Access Publications (OAP), Open Access
Journals (OAJ), and Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs). An
understanding of these four initiatives will be helpful to make
further deliberations.

Open Educational Resources (OER)

The Open Educational Resources (OER for both singular and
plural use of the phrase) movement has gone from a small, grass-
roots effort to a global mission supported by powerful educational,
non-profit, and non-governmental organizations around the
world (Wiley & Gurrell, 2009). Nowadays, organizations
(UNESCO, OECD, European Union, COL, etc.), institutions
(Universities, Colleges, etc.), and individuals are engaged in
promotion, dissemination, and use of OER (Misra, 2013; Misra,
2014). OER has emerged as one of the most innovative teaching
and learning practices and a cost-effective mechanism to improve
the quality of educational offerings by optimizing the use of
available resources (Mishra & Singh, 2017). The vision behind the

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202 Pradeep Kumar Misra

OER is that making educational resources freely available to all is a

fundamental right (Conole, 2012).
Philosophically, OER is an extension of the open access
initiative, as explained by Andersen and Ponti (2014),'Open access
often refers to research articles that are freely accessible online,
available for reuse as long as the source is accredited. OER, on the
other hand, are teaching and learning materials, such as
curriculum and course materials, released under open access
license' (p. 235).According to Geser (2007, p. 12), 'OER are
understood to comprise content for teaching and learning,
software-based tools and services, and licenses that allow for open
development and re-use of content, tools and services' (p.12).
Whereas, 2012 Paris OER declaration defines OER as, 'Teaching,
learning and research materials in any medium, digital or
otherwise, that reside in the public domain or have been released
under an open license that permits no-cost access, use, adaptation
and redistribution by others with no or limited restrictions'
(UNESCO, 2012, p. 1).
While Clements and Pawlowski (2012) see OER as resources
for learning, education, and training that are freely accessible.
These include literature and scientific resources (open access for
education), technologies, and systems (open source for education),
and open content (actual learning materials/contents) as well as
related artifacts (such as didactical materials or lesson plans).
Therefore, conceptually we can say that the distinguishing feature
of OER, when compared to other resources, is the freedom
regarding use, reuse, and repurposing (Camilleri, Ehlers &
Pawlowski, 2014).

Open Access Publications (OAP)

Open Access Publications (OAP) have emerged as one of the major
sources of knowledge for those pursuing any research. These
publications provide researchers easy and free access to a variety
of research literature like journal articles, research reports from
different organizations, project reports, etc. Often, OAP is seen as a

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Creative Commons Licenses: Benefits and Implications in 203
Teaching and Research

solution to the crisis where many libraries are unable to prescribe

enough journals due to financial constraints. Talking about the
significance of OAP to change this scenario, McVeigh (2004)
observes,
The recent move to provide scientific and scholarly
materials free through “open access” is one of the most
exciting and radical events in publishing in recent years.
Electronic publishing changed the way most scholars
access literature in their field. Now Open Access is
changing the way electronic materials are distributed
(p.16).
Another significant benefit is that researchers can easily access
OAP via the internet on their computers or smartphones. Gone are
the days when libraries were the only source of research literature,
now open access publications offer anytime, anywhere, and 24x7
access to update research literature (Misra, 2015). Researchers,
particularly of emerging countries, can take benefit of OAP for
improving their research outputs as suggested by Lathrop and
Rost (2014), 'Access to knowledge is access to the power to solve
new problems and make informed decisions. Free, open, public,
online access to the archival scientific and technical research
literature will empower citizens and scientists to solve more
problems and make better, more informed decisions.'

Open Access Journals (OAJ)

Open Access Journals (OAJ) are available online to the reader
without any financial, legal, or technical barriers (Suber, 2012).
OAJ refers to electronic journals, which give access to all users and
are subscription-free. Peer reviewing is undertaken in OAJ, and
the accepted articles are made freely available to users (Zainab,
2010). Highlighting the notable characteristics of OAJ, McVeigh
(2004) states,
Open Access journals are not necessarily new
publications. Open Access at the journal level comprises a

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204 Pradeep Kumar Misra

complex picture of availability. Many established journals

make only a few recent years of content available online,
while the majority of their content is accessible only
through traditional access paths. Other established
journals, having moved to OA distribution, offer access to
many years of older content as well (p.1).
? OAJ uses a funding model that does not charge readers or their
institutions for access. Some OAJ are financed by academic
institutions, learned societies, or a government information center.
And some are financed by payment of article processing charges
by submitting authors. The distinguishing characteristic is that
OAJ also performs peer review. The peer-review process allows
articles published in OAJ to retain a quality similar to traditional
journals (Misra, 2015). The advantages of OAJ include free access
to scientific papers regardless of affiliation with a subscribing
library, lower costs for research in academia and industry,
improved access for the general public, and higher citation rates for
the author (Eysenbach, 2006). According to Swan and Chan (2010),
OAJ offers several benefits to academia like:
?
Providing access to the world's research output, free of
financial and other restrictions;
?
Incorporating local research into an interoperable network
of global knowledge;
?
Increasing impact of local research, providing new
contacts and research partnerships for authors;
?
Removing professional isolation of researchers; and
?
Strengthening economies through developing a strong
and independent national science base.

Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs)

MOOCs are generally defined as open-ended education programs
broadcasted through the Internet to thousands of learners (Misra,
2018, p. 69). MOOCs owe the "massive" part of their name as they

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Creative Commons Licenses: Benefits and Implications in 205
Teaching and Research

reach a large number of users (up to 100 000 or more) residing in

different parts of all continents. There are both unpaid or free
MOOCS and paid MOOCs. MOOCs fall under two main
categories: 'xMOOCs' (connective Massive Open Online Courses)
and 'cMOOCs' (extended Massive Open Online Courses). Kurt
(2021) explains both these types in the following words:
xMOOCs are based on traditional course structures and
make use of established teaching approaches and
materials. Students will watch pre-recorded lectures,
complete required readings, and participate in
discussions as produced and curated by the course
instructor or an instructional team from a higher
education institution. xMOOCs are typically self-
contained and rarely if ever utilize content external to the
main content delivery and learning platform (para 5).
cMOOCs are based on connectivist learning models that
privilege collaboration as a form of active learning.
Students in a cMOOC will work together to locate,
evaluate, and contribute course content, uploading
materials (tweets, blog posts, blogs, wikis, etc.) to the
course using the learning platform. A cMOOC instructor
or instructional team facilitates learning by finalizing,
aggregating, and assessing the students' contributions to
the course (para 6).
A Commission appointed by the Norwegian Government (2013, p.
26) observes that the MOOC term is used as a catch-all for courses
with the following characteristics-
?
Online courses
?
Massive courses, i.e., scalable concerning the number of
participants
?
Open courses, i.e., anyone can sign up for them
According to Yousef, Chatti, Schroeder, Wosnitza and Jakobs
(2014),

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206 Pradeep Kumar Misra

Massive open online courses (MOOCs) have drastically

changed the way we learn as well as how we teach.
The main aim of MOOCs is to provide new opportunities
to a massive number of learners to attend free online
courses from anywhere all over the world. MOOCs have
unique features that make it an effective technology-
enhanced learning (TEL) model in higher education and
beyond (p. 9).
While Schultz (2014) argues that,
Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) are digital
teaching formats which offer stimuli for developing the
concepts of e-learning, Web 2.0 and open educational
resources. They can be used before, during and after
completion of a degree course and can also be integrated at
course, module or degree programme level in academic
teaching (p. 7).
MOOCs offer an exclusive advantage when compared to other
educational resources. Most of the MOOCs allow extensive use of
the resources free of charge and offer in exchange greater openness
in access to education, increased quality, and innovation and
creativity on the part of learners. Banking on these characteristics,
it is appropriate to claim that MOOCs presents numerous
opportunities and may be used in different ways and formats to
promote teaching and research.

Benefits and Implications of OER, OAP, OAJ, and MOOCs in

Teaching and Research
As discussed earlier, educationists and researchers across the
globe are using CC licenses in many ways. In their quest to support
the educational fraternity,they come up with initiatives like OER,
OAP, OAJ, and MOOCs. Therefore, understanding the benefits
andimplications of CC license-based resources, courses, and
publications (available as OER, OAP, OAJ, and MOOCs) will be
useful forteachers and researchers to better their teaching and
research outcomes.

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Creative Commons Licenses: Benefits and Implications in 207
Teaching and Research

1. Don't depend on few resources for teaching, select from a

variety of resources
Educationist across the globe has released thousands of useful
OER related to different discipline and subjects at school and
higher education level. These OER are available in various forms
like full courses, course modules, syllabi, lectures, homework
assignments, quizzes, lab and classroom activities, pedagogical
materials, games, simulations, and many more as OER. The
majority of these OER are available online and can be accessed
easily by individual search, search engines, or various OER
repositories. Teachers of any subject and teaching at any level of
education can easily access different types of OER. The most
notable aspect about OER is that these are released under CC
licenses and contained in digital media collections, and easily
accessible via search engines and OER repositories. In a way, these
OER offers many opportunities and possibilities for teachers to
make their teaching more meaningful and promote learning
outcomes.

2. Don't create content always, plenty of content is already

available
Teachers have to perform three major roles regarding teaching-
learning resources. They have to suggest, use, and develop
resources. Usually, teachers tend to develop their resources for
teaching (for example, lecture notes, presentations, assignments,
classroom activities, etc.). OER offers them an alternative at this
account. Instead of creating content first, teachers can initially
search for relevant content released as OER. And if available, then
they can use that content instead of creating a new resource. This
measure is supposed to save their precious time and energy. This
practice is also helpful for teachers to utilize their time and energy
in more meaningful tasks like having discussions and organizing
collaborative learning activities. Besides, teachers can also create a
pool of relevant OER for different teaching-learning purposes, as
OER released under CC authorizes the users to store OER for
individual and collective uses.

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208 Pradeep Kumar Misra

3. Don't use only one type of content, mix contents to create

multi-media content
In classrooms, teachers have learners with varying learning styles.
It is not easy for teachers to teach them by using only one type of
resource. For example, every student in a class will not be happy to
read a book, and not all students will be interested to watch an
educational video. Whereas, in traditional teaching, teachers
mainly rely on textbooks for teaching and learning purposes. As a
fact, textbooks, the prime sources of learning, often appear
monotonous and boring to the students. OER presents a new
opportunity for teachers on this account. OER allows teachers to
createmulti-media reading materials containing text, audio, video,
animation, exercises, and many more. The reason is that OER
released under the appropriate CC licenses allows users to modify
and mix different resources and create anew resource to fulfill
teaching-learning needs. This mixing of resources is quite helpful
for teachers to develop need-based resources to make their
teaching more meaningful.

4. Don't depend on contents from a particular language,

translate them in your language
The language of the majority of teaching-learningresources,
available online and offline, is English. On another note, in
countries like India where there are22 major languages, students
usually prefer that teaching and learning must be in their regional
language or mother tongue. Often, teachers deliver lectures in
local languages but recommend resources in English. OER offers a
solution to this problem. Teachers can first search the relevant OER
related to their subjects. Afterward, they can easily translate
identified OER into the preferred languages of their students. This
measure is significantly helpful for teachers to overcome the lack
of quality material for teaching and learning in local languages. In
another way, teachers can also translate the quality OER available
in different languages into the English language for dissemination
and use at the global level. Overall, OER offers many possibilities

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Creative Commons Licenses: Benefits and Implications in 209
Teaching and Research

for teachers to overcome language barriers regarding learning

materials.

5. Don't only suggest resources, use them for flipped learning

Teachers are supposed to suggest relevant resources related to
different topics to the students. OER and OAP made this task very
easy for teachers. Teachers can search and recommend useful OER
and OAP to their students. These resources are also helpful to
practice flipped learning in the classrooms. The flipped learning
works on the principle that instead of providing information
during classroom time, teachers must provide information to the
learners before coming to the class and must use the class time for
more meaningful discussions. The success of flipped learning
very much depends on the availability of quality learning
resources. And the OER and OAP present numerous
opportunities for teachers on this account (Misra, 2016). Teachers
can search useful OER and OAP related to their topics and send
them to the learners for reading in advance. Afterward, teachers
can utilize the classroom time for more meaningful discussions
and activities.

6. Don't keep your resources to yourself, publish them for

global use
Teachers create different resources for teaching their students.
They mainly keep these resources to themselves. Teachers fear that
if they share their resources with others, they will lose control over
it, or someone else will use their ideas. CC licenses help them to
overcome this fear. CC licenses allow one to declare two things at a
time. First, this idea or creation belongs to me, which means I have
a copyright of the work. Second, I allow others to use my work
freely for teaching and learning purposes, but they have to adhere
to the terms and conditions of the user license. Teachers must
realize that once they put a CC license on their resources and
release or upload them on their institutional websites or OER

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210 Pradeep Kumar Misra

repositories, people across different countries will use the

resources and know them. And the users will not steal their ideas
but attribute them to their works. In other words, the use of CC
licenses will make a local teacher a global teacher.

7. Don't offer courses to only your students, develop MOOCs

for global learners
Teachers offer different courses to their students. But CC licenses
allow teachers to offer these courses to global learners and become
a teacher at the international level. Teachers can easily convert
their courses as Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs). The
creation of MOOCs mainly requires text and video to explain the
content, assignments, and assessment activities. Teachers can
easily create all these by using online tools and assemble and offer
them online as MOOCs. Besides, another choice for teachers is to
select texts, videos, assignments, and learning assessment
activities from already available OER and mix them to offer as
MOOCs for learners. In simple terms, by using CC licenses,
teachers can teach both at the local and global levels.

8. Don't worry about the review of related literature, access

researches published in OAJ
Scholarly periodicals are one of the most significant sources of up-
to-date information and research literature in different disciplines.
But due to increasing costs, libraries are reducing the number of
subscribed periodicals. Institutional libraries, particularly in
emerging countries, are facing this situation more. If libraries can
no longer afford to pay the annual subscription cost, researchers
have no retrospective access to quality researches published in
different parts of the world. This situation is impacting
researchers in two ways. First, researchers are bound to consult
and rely on out-of-date research materials. Second, they are bound
to mostly cite papers produced by their research groups or look
mainly at the literature produced in one country or continent. And

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Creative Commons Licenses: Benefits and Implications in 211
Teaching and Research

from this perspective, OAJ are of great support for the researchers.
OAJ provide thousands of research articles free of cost for
researchers. There are many directories where researchers can
search open access journals related to their field of study. Further,
they can explore the current and archived issues of these journals
for accessing literature related to their topic of study. In a way, the
open access journals released under different CC licenses offer
great support to review the literature on a click and without any
payment.

9. Don't limit your research to payers only, make them

available for every researcher
After completing the research, researchers want to publish the
findings of their studies for dissemination and use by other
researchers. For this purpose, the most popular option among
researchers is to submit their articles to research journals. And the
majority of research journals charge a fee for reading the published
research articles. The author gets due credit for publication in these
journals. But, the majority cannot access articles published in such
journals. The reason is that those interested to read the complete
articles have to pay a specific amount or access it through their
institutional library. Particularly in emerging countries, not many
institutional libraries have enough budgets to subscribe to such
journals. Besides, every researcher can't pay the required money to
access the articles. The OAJ offer a solution to these problems. The
articles published in any OAJ get the same credit as any
copyrighted journal. In addition, the research articles are available
for access for free and download to researchers across the globe. In
a nutshell, publishing in OAJ makes once research freely accessible
to all.

Conclusion
We have entered an era of knowledge explosion. More and more
people are nowadays creating different works that are helpful for

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212 Pradeep Kumar Misra

teaching, learning, and research in many ways. And many of such

materials are available online. But there is a caveat regarding the
use of such resources. By default, all such resources come under
copyright work, and one cannot use them without the prior
consent and permission of the author/creator or making the
prescribed payment. Due to these reasons, users, particularly from
emerging countries, find it difficult to maximize the benefit of
these resources for teaching and research. Fortunately, CC licenses
offer several opportunities on this account. The by-products of CC
licenses like OER, OAP, OAJ, and MOOCs are helpful in many
ways for teaching and research. This article dealt with the
promises and possibilities of using CC licenses in detail. And, now
it is up to the teachers and researchers across different countries to
use CC-licensed resources to better teaching-learning and
promote research activities.

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