Finding Open Content

There are many sources of free-to-use content available online. This page provides suggestions on where to look for such content.

Whether you are a student creating a presentation, an academic developing teaching material, or a researcher looking for Open Access articles there is plenty of content you can take advantage of without the need to obtain permission from the relevant copyright owner. As a general rule you should always acknowledge/attribute the creator of any material you reuse as best academic practice.

Remember, if material has been licenced for reuse, make sure you check the terms of use for any material you find, as these will vary. Some material may be in the Public Domain, where copyright has expired or been waived by the creator. Once again, as a general rule you should always acknowledge/attribute the creator of any material you reuse as best academic practice.  

If you can’t find the materials or information that you’re looking for, or if you want further help, please contact us.

Open Educational Materials

Open Educational Resources (OER)

Open Education Resources (OERs) are online resources that are available for others to use to support learning.  They are part of a worldwide movement to promote and support sustainable educational development. The sharing of open educational materials is in line not only with University of Edinburgh’s mission but also with a global movement in which research-led institutions play a significant role.

An OER could be an image, diagram, video, lesson plan, textbook, or an entire course. The important part of an OER is that the material has been licensed to allow for re-mix and re-use. Reusing existing OER frees up time that can be spent on other aspects of the teaching and learning process. Their use can help you expand your range of teaching materials and can help to diversify the curriculum.

The University of Edinburgh has an OER policy, which outlines the institutional position on OERs and provides guidelines for practice in learning and teaching. You can find the policy on the Academic Services, Policies page under Learning and Teaching, or link directly to the document here:

• Open Educational Resources Policy (PDF).

You can learn more about the University’s position on OER and the Open.Ed service who provide training and support on copyright, licensing, and open education to all staff and students on the Open.Ed webpages: http://open.ed.ac.uk/about/

Open.Ed also showcases and highlights OER created by University staff and students: http://open.ed.ac.uk/edinburghs-oers/

Public Domain and CC0 

Public Domain - Works in the public domain are those whose intellectual property rights have expired, have been forfeited, or are otherwise inapplicable. Public domain marked materials can be used free of any copyright restrictions or attribution. We would still recommend either attributing the work or keeping a record of its title, source, and copyright status in order to enable ease of re-use for future works and projects.

CC0 - Dedicating works to the public domain is difficult if not impossible for those wanting to contribute their works for public use. Creative Commons have created the CC0 licence to enable owners of copyright content, to waive those interests in their works and thereby place them in the public domain, so that others may freely build upon, enhance and reuse the works for any purposes without restriction under copyright or database law. CC0 marked materials can be used free of any copyright restrictions or attribution requirements. We would still recommend either attributing the work or keeping a record of its title, source, and copyright status in order to enable ease of re-use for future works and projects.

Where to find Public Domain and Openly Licensed Resources

Open Textbooks

Open Textbooks are books that have been made accessible online free of cost and are openly licensed to allow free modifications, use, and sharing. They’re also a great resource if you’re looking for openly licensed technical images and diagrams.

• Open Textbook Library for textbooks on business and management; computer science and information systems; education; engineering; humanities and languages; journalism, media studies and communications; law; mathematics and statistics; health; sciences; and social sciences. 
• BC Campus for textbooks on arts; business and management; health; sciences; and social sciences.
• Open Stax for textbooks on humanities; mathematics and statistics; sciences; and social sciences.
• OAPEN for textbooks on business and management; earth sciences; humanities and languages; law; literature; and social sciences.

Learning and Teaching Resources

Some teachers and educators share their resources through OER repositories where anyone can upload and download learning resources in more than one format for reuse and remixing.

TES is one of these repositories and acts as an online platform where educators can discover and share original teaching materials. Its focus is on sharing materials for primary and secondary school, and up to early undergraduate, education levels.

The Open.Ed service have worked with University staff to share over 30 resources on TES. Most of these have come from the Geosciences Outreach course with assistance from our summer OER Content Curator interns. Go to the Open.Ed TES Connect account

Click here for a list of open repositories of educational material you can view the table created by the Open.Ed services 

Images

• Images.is.ed.ac.uk – This is the University of Edinburgh Library collection of digitised images from our library, archives, and museums. A number of images within the collection have been openly licensed.
• Flickr - Many Flickr users have chosen to offer their work under a Creative Commons license; you can browse or search through content under each type of license. Our Centre for Research Collections (CRC) has a Flickr channel highlighting some of the excellent openly licensed content in our collections. Visit the CRC Flickr channel
• Wellcome Collection – Thousands of Creative Commons licensed images from historical library materials and museum objects to contemporary digital photographs.
• Wikimedia Commons – Wikimedia operates on a copyleft principle so the majority of media, images, video, sound files are in the Public Domain, CC0, or CC BY-SA licensed.
• Europeana – A collection of digitised Museum, Gallery, Library, and Archival media from all across Europe. To search for licensed content, use the filter ‘Can I use it?’. Europeana also offers the ability to filter by institution, so you can search for University of Edinburgh content that has been openly licensed here too.
• Public Domain Review – Aims to shine a light on curiosities and wonders from a wide range of online archives, highlighting content that has now fallen into the public domain and is no longer protected by copyright.
• Search Creative Commons - The Creative Commons website has a facility to search across multiple sources for material labelled for re-use under a CC licence.
• CC Beta Search – The new release of the CC Beta Search tool aggregates results from across the multiple public repositories into a single catalogue, and also facilitates the use and re-use through tools like curated lists, saved searches, one- or no-click attribution, and provenance.
• FreeFoto.com - FreeFoto.com claims to be the largest collection of free photographs on the Internet. All images are free to use with attribution for non-commercial purposes.
• Pixabay – A large percentage of Pixabay images are openly licensed.
• Noun Project - Over a million curated icons, created by a global community

Sound and Video

• Media Hopper  is the University’s Media Asset platform. It provides all staff and students with a space that they can use to upload media and then publish to various places, including VLEs, Websites and social media channels.
• YouTube is the world’s largest online video sharing platform. YouTube offers two types of licences for videos uploaded to the platform, including the Creative Commons Attribution licence.
• Vimeo was the first video sharing site to support high-definition video. Videos can also be re-shared and embedded within other websites by using the Vimeo platform. However, Vimeo also offers the full suite of Creative Commons and Public Domain licensing options. And users can also choose to allow others to download their content for re-use outside of Vimeo. For this reason, the platform is often preferred by artists and film creators.
• Soundcloud is used by a broad range of amateur and professional artists, societies, and broadcasters. Just like YouTube and Vimeo, SoundCloud tracks can also be shared and embedded within other webpages and platforms such as Twitter. It also offers the full suite of Creative Commons and Public Domain licensing options.
• Public Domain Review – Aims to shine a light on curiosities and wonders from a wide range of online archives, highlighting content that has now fallen into the public domain and is no longer protected by copyright.
• Wikimedia Commons – Wikimedia operates on a copyleft principle, meaning that the work continues to be open and available for re-use, so the majority of media, images, video, sound files are in the Public Domain, CC0, or CC BY-SA licensed.
• Europeana – A collection of digitised Museum, Gallery, Library, and Archival media from all across Europe. To search for licensed content, use the filter ‘Can I use it?’. Europeana also offers the ability to filter by institution, so you can search for University of Edinburgh content that has been openly licensed here too.
• Search Creative Commons - The Creative Commons website has a facility to search across multiple sources for material labelled for re-use under a CC licence.
• CC Beta Search – The new release of the CC Beta Search tool aggregates results from across the multiple public repositories into a single catalogue, and also facilitates the use and re-use through tools like curated lists, saved searches, one- or no-click attribution, and provenance.

Click here for a longer list of specialised content sites view the table created by the Open.Ed services

Further Resources