CAMBRIDGE, Mass. - In a move to encourage open education, MIT OpenCourseWare (OCW) and Elsevier have agreed to make available figures and text selections from any of Elsevier’s more than 2,000 journal titles for use on OCW.
As a result of this landmark agreement, select Elsevier content can now be included within the open access OCW course materials – to be freely downloaded, used and shared under a Creative Commons license. The Elsevier content includes up to three figures (including tables and illustrations) per individual article (or ten per journal volume) and up to 100 words from a single text extract (or 300 words from a series of extracts).
“This is a great example of how publishers and institutions can work together to support the academic community, in this case by making it easier to use copyright works for academic purposes,” said Mark Seeley, general counsel, Elsevier. “MIT Open Courseware is making a very important and innovative contribution and we are delighted to be able to help make it even more successful,” he continued.
Elsevier publishes prestigious journals within the science and health fields including, Journal of Biomechanics, Cell, Journal of Structural Biology, Biomaterials, Polymer, and Planetary & Space Sciences. The full list is available at 
http://www.elsevier.com.
The agreement will significantly increase the richness of OCW materials, since many of the illustractions reduce the amount of time that professors, their staff and OCW staff would have otherwise spent searching and obtaining permissions for individual quotes and figures.
Cecilia d’Oliveira, acting executive director of OCW said, “We hear from thousands of students, educators, and self learners everyday about how OCW materials have helped changed their lives. Offering additional resources to these people will make an even greater impact on open learning and education. We hope this agreement will inspire other publishers to join in these efforts to unlock knowledge and empower people around the world.”
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About OCW
MIT OpenCourseWare (OCW), available at
http://ocw.mit.edu, makes the course materials used in the teaching of MIT undergraduate and graduate subjects available on the Web, free of charge, to any user in the world. Educators utilize the materials for curriculum development, while students and self learners around the globe use them for self study or supplementary use. With nearly all courses now available, OCW is delivering on the promise of open sharing of knowledge.
About Elsevier
Elsevier is a world-leading publisher of scientific, technical and medical information products and services. Working in partnership with the global science and health communities, Elsevier’s 7,000 employees in over 70 offices worldwide publish more than 2,000 journals and 1,900 new books per year, in addition to offering a suite of innovative electronic products, such as
ScienceDirect,
MD Consult,
Scopus, bibliographic databases and online reference works.
Elsevier is a global business headquartered in Amsterdam, The Netherlands and has offices worldwide. Elsevier is part of
Reed Elsevier Group plc, a world-leading publisher and information provider. Operating in the science and medical, legal, education and business-to-business sectors, Reed Elsevier provides high-quality and flexible information solutions to users, with increasing emphasis on the Internet as a means of delivery. Reed Elsevier's ticker symbols are REN (Euronext Amsterdam), REL (London Stock Exchange), RUK and ENL (New York Stock Exchange).
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