Adding Citations
The edit screen of every page in a Candela book will offer you the option to add Citations. The Citations feature is a vital part of ethical use of Open Educational Resources, because it allows you to Attribute sources as they are used, as per Creative Commons licensing agreements.
Note: a more detailed explanation of the types of attributions and how they apply can be found later in this guide, under Copyright & Citations.
Find the Citations section underneath the content editor for the page.
The first pull-down menu, under “Type,” allows you to identify what kind of content you’re citing.
- Original content – for content you’ve authored yourself. (It’s very helpful to give yourself credit! To learn more about this, see Why To Give Yourself Credit later in this book.)
- CC licensed content – for OER content with Creative Commons licensing. See more about CC licenses later in this user guide.
- Copyrighted video content – primarily for YouTube links. Some YouTube videos will have CC licenses on them, and those with CC licenses can use the “CC licensed content” option instead. For all others, use this “copyrighted video content” option. To identify the license on a particular video, select the “Show More” option on the information section directly underneath the video in the YouTube website.
- Public Domain – for content that’s been made available in the public domain (has no copyright).
- CC with specific attribution – for content with atypical Creative Commons licensing. This is rare.
- Lumen Learning authored content – for content that was developed by members of Lumen’s team.
Beneath this pull-down menu, fill in as many of the blanks as you can, based on the information provided by the source of the OER content.
Description: the title of the OER content, or a brief synopsis of what it is so a reader can tell which part of the content page uses this source.
Author: Author(s) of the content, if known. User names are also appropriate here, such as for Flickr images.
Organization: the school/institution an author is affiliated with, if known, or an institution name if no individiual author is identified.
URL: how a reader could locate the OER material, if available. Not all OER will have an URL.
Project: the project or program that sponsored the creation of the OER material, if applicable.
Licensing: Another Pull-down menu. Select the type of License that’s noted on the OER.
License Terms: note unusual or unique licensing that may not be addressed in the “Licensing” pull-down menu above. This is relatively uncommon. If you’re using a YouTube clip that’s not CC-licensed, write “Standard YouTube License” in this box, for instance.