Author Agreements (MOUs) and Contracts

Introduction

Using a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) or other contract or formal agreement between you, the publisher, and the author is very important. Not only will it clarify expectations, but it may surface questions about who owns the copyright and what faculty union/bargaining agreements allow at your institution. You will want to work with your general counsel on developing a contract.

MOU Considerations

Fund disbursement may also inform the MOU. Often MOUs are structured so that partial or full disbursement depends the grantee providing certain deliverables. For example, the MOU may require an acknowledgement from the grants/business office.

Other MOU details to consider include:

  • What are the due dates for required material that will satisfy project completion?
  • How many progress meetings are the grantees committed to attend?
  • Will grantees be expected to participate in OER presentations, complete relevant instructional courses or share their experience in future OER programming events? 
  • How will you confirm that the grantee has the support of their department? Should additional stakeholders' signatures also be required? 
  • What Creative Commons License will be required? Do your grantees have choices? 
  • Are your grantees committed to using the implemented OER for a specific number of of semesters or academic years?
  • May grantees implement Affordable Educational Resources (AER) and Open Access (OA) into grant-funded projects, or is is only OER permitted? 

For additional reading, see Contracts Links to an external site. in the Self-Publishing Guide by BCcampus.

Benefits

In this video, Meredith Jacob, Assistant Director, Program on Information Justice and Intellectual Property, and Public Lead, Creative Commons USA, Washington College of Law, talks about the benefits of using a contract. These include clarifying roles, expectations and timelines among everyone involved. She recommends a contract regardless of whether money is changing hands.

Office Hours: MOUs, Contracts and Agreements Links to an external site. by Rebus Community on YouTube (CC BY Links to an external site.)

Adaptable OER Publishing Agreement

The Adaptable OER Publishing Agreement Links to an external site. (CC BY) was designed to be a starting point for higher education institutions that want to contract with their faculty to create OER. It was developed in a way that makes it easy for institutions to edit the agreement to meet their own campus intellectual property policy requirements. Creative Commons USA, Open Education Network and Rebus Community worked together to create this document.

You will want to work with your general counsel on intellectual property questions related to the contract. With that in mind, you may want to prepare an introduction to Creative Commons, as they may not be familiar with open licensing and open education. 

MOU Examples

Student Contributors

Working with student authors and contributors requires thoughtful and deliberate planning. Faculty and students don't typically share equal power in the classroom, so requiring students to openly license content they create isn't recommended, since a student may find it difficult to say no. For additional considerations around student contributors and open pedagogy refer to A Guide to Making Open Textbooks with Students Links to an external site..

In addition, there are both copyright and FERPA considerations when students are involved in creating OER projects. Consider adapting a template with your Office of General Counsel (OGC) before beginning a project with students. Here are examples:

Again, institutions should always review templates with administrators or their OGC before using them.