While you’re not required to add original content to the OER courses you adopt, many instructors take advantage of the opportunity to do so.

When you do add unique material to your course, whether it’s as a new separate page, or as an addition to an existing page, we recommend the practice of creating a citation that acknowledges your contribution. Just like you credit others when you use their work, it’s great to credit yourself, as well.

There are a few reasons for this:

• It helps your students understand your contributions to their learning tools.
• It models responsible documentation of sources (so that it’s clear you’ve not borrowed something from outside sources without giving credit for it).
• It increases the diversity of voices in the OER materials.
• It makes for easy adoption by others who will want to give you credit, if you choose to share the material. (Sharing is not required, but if you create something great, we may well ask if we can pass it to other instructors in the same discipline!).

To create a citation for materials you’ve written or heavily modified, use the “Citations” section at the bottom of the Edit view.

• Type: Original Content
• Description: name of your original work, or quick description of your modification
• Author: your name (and title, if you wish)
• Organization: your school or other institution
• URL: probably not necessary, unless your content already lives online somewhere else users can access it, such as a SlideShare page.  If not, skip this.
• Project: probably not necessary, unless you’ve written this work as part of a grant-funded project at your institution.  If not, skip this.
• Licensing: select which Creative Commons license you wish to apply.  (Review the Copyright & Citations section of this handbook for more guidance about each option.) When in doubt, CC BY is the license Lumen recommends.
• License terms: leave blank, unless there are specific license terms you need to state.