5 Best Practices for Attributions
Attribution statements
You might have noticed that all the Creative Commons licenses you explored have one common element: they include “CC BY”, or attribution requirements. In a CC BY licence, the “CC” stands for “Creative Commons” and the “BY” stands for “Attribution,” or who the work is “by.”
An attribution statement is used to provide credit to the original creator; its purpose is similar to a citation. (However, attributions and citations are not the same thing! We’ll speak more on this later.)
Attribution statements ensure that readers and users are clear on who created what – your audience should not be misled to believe you are the original creator of a licensed work. When using text from another open educational resource, it is important to be clear in your attribution statement what section of your own resource contains this information.
Should items in the public domain be attributed?
Resources for which copyright has been designated to the public domain by the creator do not require that attribution be given to the creator. However, as a best practice, we encourage still crediting the author or artist for the resources they created. Taking this extra step does several things:
- It shows respect provides recognition for the individual who created and freely shared their creation.
- It upholds academic integrity.
- It ensures consistency in how a course resource is styled.
- It leaves no doubt that the resource is open for use and provides future users with links and other information about the resource’s origins.
Title, author, source, license
A good rule of thumb is to use the acronym TASL, which stands for Title, Author, Source, License.
Title
What is the name of the material? If a title was provided for the material, include it. Sometimes a title is not provided; in that case, don’t worry about it.
Author
Who owns the material? Name the author or authors of the material in question. Sometimes, the licensor may want you to give credit to some other entity, like a company or pseudonym. In rare cases, the licensor may not want to be attributed at all. In all of these cases, just do what they request.
Source
Where can I find it? Since you somehow accessed the material, you know where to find it. Provide the source of the material so others can, too. Since we live in the age of the Internet, this is usually a URL or hyperlink where the material resides.
License
How can I use it? You are obviously using the material for free thanks to the CC license, so make note of it. Don’t just say the material is Creative Commons, because that says nothing about how the material can actually be used. Remember that there are six different CC licenses; which one is the material under? Name and provide a link to it.
If the licensor included a license notice with more information, include that as well.
Lastly, is there anything else I should know before I use it?
When you accessed the material originally did it come with