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BCSC 310 Senior Seminar (Kurumada)

Information related to the video assignment in Professor Kurumada's course.

Adding an Open License Is Optional

The Choice Is Yours

Adding a Creative Commons license to your video is completely optional. You are encouraged but not required to openly license and share your work.

Step 1: Credit Your Sources

Cite Your Sources

Before you add a Creative Commons license to your video, it's time to review all of the material you've included in your video and make sure you have properly credited your sources. This includes:

  1. APA citations for any sources you have used.
  2. Attributions for openly licensed material you have used.

Citations vs. Attributions: What's the Difference?

Citations identify the sources you used to create your work and help you avoid plagiarism by giving credit to the authors or creators of source you've used. There are standardized ways to format these citations so that readers can easily see your sources and possibly find them themselves, such as APA or MLA style.

Attributions are required for all Creative Commons-licensed works you used. Though there isn't a standardized format for these, they generally include elements that can be summarized with the acronym TASL: 

  • Title: the title of the work, if there is one. If the title isn't clear, take your best guess (e.g., a website name or a description of an image).
  • Author: who created the work. Note that sometimes no author is identified or an alias is used, such as a username. 
  • Source: where the work can be found (usually a link if the source is online).
  • License: the Creative Commons license the creator included in the work (CC BY, CC BY-NC, etc.). Best practice is to also include a link to the license info on the Creative Commons website.

Step 2: Choose Your License

Which License Is Right for You?

There are six Creative Commons licenses to choose from (though two of them are not recommended because they're not truly open). 

Step 3: Add the License Icon & Text

Place the Icon at the Beginning & End of Your Video

Placing the Creative Commons license logo at the bottom of the screen at the beginning of your video will give viewers a heads up that you have applied an open license to the video.

At the end of your video, repeat the logo and add the information needed for someone to provide the proper attribution to you if they reuse your work:

  • Title: the title of your video.
  • Author: your name or a pseudonym if you have decided to remain anonymous. 
  • License: the Creative Commons license you have chosen (CC BY, CC BY-NC, etc.).

For example:

CC BYNeuroscience Explained by Stephanie Student is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Step 4: Note Your License If/When You Upload Your Video to YouTube

Adding a Creative Commons License 

When it's time to upload your video to YouTube, you can note that it has a Creative Commons license rather than the standard YouTube license. You can also note the license, your preferred attribution, and the attribution of any open sources you've used in the description field.