Some pretty amazing news out of MIT last week: Elsevier and MIT’s OpenCourseWare have inked a deal to allow OCW to access a certain portion of Elsevier content under a Creative Commons license. Though I can’t find a reference to the specific CC license agreed to, David Wiley seems to think it is a By-NC-SA license, which would allow anyone who gets this material from OCW to use it and share it non-commercially. Bravo to MIT and Elsevier for finding common ground that allows broader use of such important content. I can’t help wondering if the open content movement is not putting real pressure on companies like Elsevier to work harder to allow their content to be used fully in the academic community.
