European Universities alliances must embrace open educational resources

The copyright challenge

In European Universities alliances, joint teaching and the development of shared educational materials have become standard practice. However, copyright remains a significant challenge. Despite harmonisation efforts such as Article 5 of the EU Copyright Directive, differences in national legislation continue to create legal uncertainty for cross-border teaching.

For instance, a university in Germany can legally upload some scanned pages from a textbook into a learning management system accessible to a limited number of students, due to an exception granted for education. However, an Austrian university cannot do the same, as textbook copies are generally not permitted. So, if a German lecturer uses textbook copies during a lecture for Austrian students, this would violate Austrian copyright law.

Even when teaching materials are created collaboratively within a university alliance, subsequent use presents significant copyright challenges, and requires some kind of contractual agreement. Without explicit contractual provisions, even alliance members would require separate permissions to adapt or translate materials containing third-party copyrighted elements.

Enabling practical and legal shared educational resources

Open educational resources (OER) offer a legally robust, adaptable and future-oriented foundation for cross-border teaching in university alliances. Rather than navigating fragmented copyright regimes, alliances can use open licensing to foster a shared educational space, aligned with the EU’s digital, sustainable and inclusive education agenda.

With open licences, such as certain Creative Commons licences, content can be reused, adapted and redistributed without the need for case-by-case legal clarification. These licences provide clear legal certainty across jurisdictions.

To explore their potential, the Unite! alliance undertook a project dedicated to OER courses. Here, as all materials were openly licensed, they were adapted, translated and shared widely, within the alliance and beyond. This flexibility simplifies collaboration and reduces legal and administrative overheads, particularly in shared online systems (in our case the ‘Unite! Metacampus’).

Based on this experience, it is clear that European Universities alliances should systematically integrate open educational resources into their strategies – not as an optional extra, but as a core enabler of legally sound and innovative international collaboration. While OER cannot solve all copyright challenges, they provide the most sustainable framework for cross-border educational cooperation in Europe.

Future readiness and digital sovereignty

Open educational resources enable responses to emerging challenges in higher education. Openly licensed content can be used in artificial intelligence (AI) applications, such as Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) systems and domain-specific language models – something not permitted with proprietary materials.

Furthermore, OER strengthen digital sovereignty. By reducing dependency on commercial providers and proprietary systems, institutions retain control over their content and infrastructure. Platforms that provide access to massive open online course (MOOCs), such as iMooX.at in Austria, demonstrate how open licensing can align with European goals for autonomy, interoperability and privacy. Indeed, they allow institutions to host and manage their own content platforms, avoid vendor lock-in, ensure GDPR compliance and maintain control over educational data and infrastructure.

Lastly, open educational resources support sustainability. Educational resources developed under open licences can be reused and adapted over time, reducing duplication and supporting long-term collaboration.

How can alliances implement open educational resources?

While the advantages of OER are clear, their systematic adoption faces several challenges:

• Perceptions of short-term costs outweighing immediate gains
• Institutional inertia and resistance to change
• Need for coordinated policy changes at multiple levels
• Lack of awareness about long-term benefits among institutional leadership

To address these challenges, university alliances should:

• Develop clear OER policies and guidelines for materials, especially educational content created in or for alliances
• Provide training and support for faculty in creating and using OER within alliances and its members
• Establish repositories for OER
• Create funding mechanisms to support OER development in alliances
• Advocate for policy changes at national and EU levels

For copyrighted materials that cannot be converted to OER or open licensed texts, alliances should:

• Negotiate consortium licenses where possible
• Develop clear procedures for obtaining permissions
• Maintain detailed records of copyright status
• Consider fair use/dealing where applicable
• Explore alternative access models such as document delivery services

Note: The Unite! (University Network for Innovation, Technology and Engineering) alliance is comprised of the Technical University of Darmstadt (Germany), Aalto University (Finland), Graz University of Technology (Austria), Grenoble INP-UGA (France), KTH Royal Institute of Technology (Sweden), Politecnico di Torino (Italy), the University of Lisbon (Portugal), Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya – BarcelonaTech (Spain) and Wrocław University of Science and Technology (Poland).