As described in our Una Europa Open Educational Resources (OER) Vision Statement, Una Europa actively promotes OERs by facilitating all staff, students and members of our wider community to use, create, and publish OERs. This is in alignment with the UNESCO OER Recommendation, the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and the European Commission’s work.

The following guidelines will support members of Una Europa’s community to use and create OERs:

1. Una Europa encourages staff and students to reuse and repurpose existing OERs and openly licensed resources, created within and beyond the Alliance, provided they are relevant, fit-for-purpose and used in accordance with the terms of the licence. This will help to expand the pool of resources available for teaching, learning and innovation while also promoting sustainability and reducing duplication of effort.

2. It is expected that all publicly-available materials published by Una Europa will normally be shared as OERs (resources including Creative Commons licences – see point 6) to contribute to wider society, promote opportunities for innovation by adapting our work in various contexts and languages, and ensure that materials produced using public funding will be available to all. Exceptions may include requirements by external funders or any commercial interests.

3. Individually and collectively, staff and students will use, create and publish OERs in a wide range of formats, including but not limited to: course materials, images, video, podcasts, coursework assignments, reports, and outputs from our other initiatives.

4. All OERs used and created must be as accessible as reasonably possible for all users to facilitate accessibility and inclusion.

5. When using or creating OERs, students and staff must comply with the terms of the licence of use for any third-party materials, including adequate attribution of authors/owners. It is the responsibility of staff and students to ensure that they have the necessary rights to publish an OER and that all resources published comply with all relevant legislation, policy and guidance (e.g. copyright, IPR, data protection, accessibility).

6. Staff and students are advised to publish OERs using a Creative Commons Attribution licence (CC BY), to encourage the greatest level of openness. Other Creative Commons licences may be used if colleagues feel this is necessary or appropriate for their particular resource, or to comply with the licence of any third-party content used in the resource.

7. When creating and publishing OERs, the copyright author(s), owner(s) (if, as in some countries, the employer is the owner according to copyright law), date and Creative Commons licence must be visibly attributed. This will properly give attribution and recognition for work undertaken, and it will help others understand what permissions for reuse are being granted. An example of good attribution for OERs created by students would be:

[Resource Title] for Una Europa, © [Author Name], CC BY, 2022

Generally speaking, examples of good attribution for OERs created by staff would be:

• For Germany, Finland, and France: [Resource Title] for Una Europa, © [Author Name], CC BY, 2022
• For the UK, Belgium, Poland, Italy, Spain and the Netherlands: [Resource Title] for Una Europa, © [Author Name], [University Name], CC BY, 2022
• For jointly authored work with a limited number of contributors: [Resource Title] for Una Europa, © [Author Name, University Name (if needed)] and [Author Name, University Name (if needed)], CC BY, 2022

8. Where OERs have been created explicitly as part of activity funded by the European Commission, any attributions to the European Commission should also include the following statement:
The European Commission support for the production of UNA Europa content does not constitute an endorsement of the contents, which reflect the views only of the authors. The European Commission is not liable for any consequences stemming from the reuse of this material.

9. Partner universities and/or Una Europa vzw reserves the right to request that any resources with their logos or that they own could be edited or removed if the OERs do not comply with their policies.

10. Una Europa recommends that open educational resources should be published in an appropriate repository or public-access website in order to maximise their discovery and use by others.

11. It is expected that relevant support services across our Alliance partners (e.g. Open Education and Open Science departments) will be available to support staff and students with any queries relating to use, creation, and publication of OERs.

Except where otherwise noted or where logos are trademarked, this content was developed by the Una Europa OER Working Group, 2022, CC BY.

This guidance has drawn on and been adapted from OER policies from the University of Edinburgh (2016 and 2021 versions), the University of Leeds (2012 and 2017 versions), the GCU Interim OER Policy and the University of Greenwich Position in relation to Open Educational Practices 2015-2017 (no longer available online).