Simplifying license attribution for OER with emacs-reveal

Motivation

Reality check

• Suppose you give a talk about OER
• You find the “OER Global Logo”

  • You decide to include it

    “OER Global Logo” by Jonathasmello under Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported; from Wikimedia Commons

  • You identify Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported (CC BY 3.0) as applicable license terms
• How to locate and include attribution information demanded by license?

Incomplete rules of thumb

• TASL by Creative Commons

  “licensing” by Ralf Schmitzer under CC BY 3.0 US; cropped from the Noun Project

  • Title, author, source, license
• TULLU in Germany
  • Titel, Urheber*in, Lizenz, Link, Ursprungsort

• Licensees must also indicate modifications, reproduce copyright notices and disclaimers

Major challenge

• Incomplete and inconsistent source information

  “Puzzle” by Kelcey Hurst under CC BY 3.0 US; cropped from the Noun Project

  • E.g., OER Global logo above

    • No title but author information at Wikimedia Commons
      • Jonathasmello
    • Conflicting title and author information in logo manual

      • First page, Global OER Logo

        2012, Jonathas Mello
        www.jonathasmello.com
        

      • Last page, OER Global Logo

        Jonathas Mello
        

• Apparently, manual copying of license information by licensees not feasible
  • Textual specification by licensors neither
• Identifying provenance and attribution is among the most time-consuming factors for OER projects [FLGB16]

OER presentations with emacs-reveal

• Emacs-reveal is software to generate HTML presentations

  “lecture” by LUTFI GANI AL ACHMAD under CC BY 3.0 US; cropped from the Noun Project

  • With proper license attribution for images

    “licensing” by Ralf Schmitzer under CC BY 3.0 US; cropped from the Noun Project

    • Human-readable, e.g., images on this slide
    • Machine-readable with RDFa (in HTML source code)
      • (Example follows)
  • Based on
    • (Editor) GNU Emacs with Org mode
    • JavaScript presentation framework reveal.js

Background

OER - What?

• Open Educational Resources (OER)

  • OER are “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.”

    “OER Global Logo” by Jonathasmello under Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported; from Wikimedia Commons

    • Usually, Creative Commons licensing
      • Permit 5 Rs of openness [Wil14],[HWSJ10]: retain, reuse, revise, remix, redistribute
  • In addition to license requirements, also technical requirements
    • E.g., ALMS framework [HWSJ10], extended in [Lec19]
      • (Backup slides)
      • (Org source for this slide)

OER - Why?

• Global perspective: SDG4, world peace

  • “Open Educational Resources (OER) support quality education that is equitable, inclusive, open and participatory.” [Une17]

• Other reasons

• General movement for freedom and transparency

  “Transparency” by Wichai Wi under CC BY 3.0 US; cropped from the Noun Project

  • Open Access, Open Data, Open Education, Open Science, (Free/Libre and) Open Source Software

Emacs-reveal

• Free/libre and open source software (FLOSS) to create OER presentations [Lec19b]
  • (FLOSS: 4 freedoms, similar to 5 Rs above, but going back to 1980s [Sta86])

  • HTML slideshows with audio explanations

    “Online Resources” by LUTFI GANI AL ACHMAD under CC BY 3.0 US; cropped from the Noun Project

    • To be viewed with standard Web browsers (platform independent), either on- or offline
    • Features include
      • Animations and slide transitions; speaker’s view with preview, notes, and timer; embedding of images, audio, video, mathematical formulas; table of contents; bibliography; keyword index; hyperlinks within and between presentations; themes for different styling; responsive design with touch support; quizzes for retrieval practice; code highlighting and evaluation for programming languages
  • Contents separated from layout with lightweight markup language Org mode
    • Enables single sourcing [Roc01]

    • Enables collaboration with version control, e.g., Git

      “Git Logo” by Jason Long under CC BY 3.0; from git-scm.com

Attribution with emacs-reveal

CC attribution requirements

• CC REL is a standard for machine-readable licensing information [AAL+12]
  • As TASL and TULLU, CC REL is incomplete
• Emacs-reveal extends CC REL in pragmatic ways

Metadata for OER logo

• Sample metadata with license information
  • Stored in text file Global_OER_Logo.svg.meta
    • As part of my OER figure collection

 1: ; Semicolon starts comment until end of line (Emacs Lisp).
 2: ; Lines 13-16 occur in comments; they illustrate available options.
 3: 
 4: ((filename . "./figures/logos/Global_OER_Logo.svg.png")
 5:  (licenseurl . "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/")
 6:  (licensetext . "Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported")
 7:  (cc:attributionName . "Jonathasmello")
 8:  (cc:attributionURL . "https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Jonathasmello")
 9:  (dc:source . "https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Global_Open_Educational_Resources_Logo.svg")
10:  (sourcetext . "Wikimedia Commons")
11:  (dc:title . "OER Global Logo")
12:  (texwidth . 0.2)
13: ; (imgalt . "If the title is not suitable as alt text.")
14: ; (imgadapted . "Indicate modifications/provenance.")
15: ; (permit . "Indicate special permissions/disclaimers.")
16: ; (copyright . "Reproduce copyright notice of source.")
17: )

Sample markup

• Org mode source code for earlier slide

  ** OER - What?
     - *Open Educational Resources* (OER)
       #+ATTR_REVEAL: :frag (appear)
       - OER are
         “[[https://en.unesco.org/oer/paris-declaration][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.]]”
         {{{reveallicense("./figures/logos/Global_OER_Logo.svg.meta","30vh")}}}
         #+ATTR_REVEAL: :frag appear
         - Usually, Creative Commons licensing
           - Permit 5 Rs of openness cite:Wil14,HWSJ10:
             /retain/, /reuse/, /redistribute/, /revise/, /remix/
       - In addition to license requirements, also technical requirements
         - E.g., ALMS framework cite:HWSJ10, extended in cite:Lec19
           - ([[#alms][Backup slides]])
           - ([[#org-markup][Org source for this slide]])
  

  • Note
    • Simple markup, e.g.:
      • ** for 2nd-level heading; - with indentation for nested lists; * and / for bold and italics
      • Citations to BibTeX bibliography with cite, animations with :frag appear
    • OER logo embedded with reveallicense
      • Metadata of previous slide handled automatically

Sample RDFa for OER logo (simplified)

1: <div about="Global_OER_Logo.svg.png" class="figure">
2:   <img src="Global_OER_Logo.svg.png" alt="OER Global Logo" />
3:   <span property="dc:title">OER Global Logo</span>
4:   by <a rel="cc:attributionURL dc:creator" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Jonathasmello" property="cc:attributionName">Jonathasmello</a>
5:   under <a rel="license" href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/">Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported</a>;
6:   from <a rel="dc:source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Global_Open_Educational_Resources_Logo.svg">Wikimedia Commons</a>
7: </div>

(Hint: Inspect RDFa with browser extension OpenLink Structured Data Sniffer)

Conclusions

Spread the wOERd

• OER “support quality education that is equitable, inclusive, open and participatory.” [Une17]
  • CC licensing can provide freedom
  • Emacs-reveal is a tool to create OER presentations and helps with licensing attribution

A jOERney ahead

• Emacs-reveal adds necessary metadata in pragmatic ways

  Figure under CC0 1.0

  • Further standardization?
  • Aesthetics vs legal requirements?
  • Your suggestions?

It’s your tOERn

Backup

License metadata

• License information should be machine-readable

  “licensing” by Ralf Schmitzer under CC BY 3.0 US; cropped from the Noun Project

  • Overcome above challenges
  • Improve tool support in general
• Creative Commons Rights Expression Language (CC REL) [AAL+12]

  • RDF vocabulary to express (some) licensing aspects

    “jigsaw puzzle” by Magicon under CC BY 3.0 US; cropped from the Noun Project

    • (See revisited)
• RDF: Resource description framework, semantic web approach [Hor08]
  • Specify knowledge in triples: subject, predicate, object
    • E.g., Jens is author of a specific document
  • RDFa: Embedding of RDF into HTML

ALMS framework

Criteria for OER software proposed in [HWSJ10]

More requirements

• Extension of ALMS framework [Lec19]
  • Requirements for “A”: Free/libre and open source software (FLOSS)
    • FLOSS for learners, teachers, OER users and creators
    • Platform independent
    • Also mobile and offline
  • Requirements for “M” and “S”: Single sourcing [Roc01]
    • Single, collaboratively maintained source, no Copy&Paste
    • Separation of contents and layout
    • Source files with lightweight markup for collaboration with comparison and integration of versions
• Emacs-reveal satisfies above requirements

OER infrastructure on GitLab

• GitLab is a FLOSS DevOps platform

  “GitLab Logo” by GitLab under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0; from gitlab.com

  • Hosting emacs-reveal and my OER as GitLab Pages
  • You could run your own instance if you preferred
• OER are re-generated upon source changes

  • GitLab CI/CD pipelines with Docker images

    “Docker logo” under Docker Brand Guidelines; from Docker

Bibliography

• [AAL+12] Abelson, Adida, Linksvayer & Yergler, CC REL: The Creative Commons Rights Expression Language, in: The digital public domain: foundations for an open culture, Open Book Publishers, 2012.
• [FLGB16] Falconer, Littlejohn, McGill & Beetham, Motives and tensions in the release of open educational resources: The UKOER program, Australasian Journal of Educational Technology 32(4), (2016).
• [Hor08] Horrocks, Ontologies and the Semantic Web, Commun. ACM 51(12), 58-67 (2008).
• [HWSJ10] Hilton, Wiley, Stein & Johnson, The four ‘R’s of openness and ALMS analysis: frameworks for open educational resources, Open Learning 25(1), 37-44 (2010).
• [Lec19] Lechtenbörger, Erstellung und Weiterentwicklung von Open Educational Ressources im Selbstversuch, MedienPädagogik 34, 101-117 (2019). https://doi.org/10.21240/mpaed/34/2019.03.02.X
• [Lec19b] Lechtenbörger, Emacs-reveal: A software bundle to create OER presentations, Journal of Open Source Education (JOSE) 2(18), (2019). https://doi.org/10.21105/jose.00050
• [Roc01] Rockley, The Impact of Single Sourcing and Technology, Technical Communication 48(2), 189-193 (2001).
• [Sta86] Stallman, What is the Free Software Foundation?, GNU's Bulletin 1(1), (1986). https://www.gnu.org/bulletins/bull1.html
• [Une17] UNESCO, Ljubljana OER Action Plan 2017, 2017. https://en.unesco.org/sites/default/files/ljubljana_oer_action_plan_2017.pdf
• [Wil14] Wiley, The Access Compromise and the 5th R, 2014. https://opencontent.org/blog/archives/3221

License Information

Except where otherwise noted, this work, “Simplifying license attribution for OER with emacs-reveal”, is © 2019 by Jens Lechtenbörger, published under the Creative Commons license CC BY-SA 4.0.

No warranties are given. The license may not give you all of the permissions necessary for your intended use.

In particular, trademark rights are not licensed under this license. Thus, rights concerning third party logos (e.g., on the title slide) and other (trade-) marks (e.g., “Creative Commons” itself) remain with their respective holders.