H-Net is “an international consortium of scholars and teachers…[creating] and [coordinating] Internet networks with the common objective of advancing teaching and research in the arts, humanities, and social sciences. H-Net is committed to pioneering the use of new communication technology to facilitate the free exchange of academic ideas and scholarly resources.” Recently, H-Net took a step towards facilitating this free exchange by licensing their online scholarly reviews of various books in the humanities and social sciences CC BY-NC-ND. Normally, scholarly reviews take a while to come out in print journals, so the online reviewing system of H-Net is effective in not only providing timely access to these reviews but also in stimulating response and discussion via their discussion networks, where each review is also published. 

ccLearn supports this step towards increasing openness and hopes for greater progress from H-Net in the future. MIT Press also recently licensed their publication, “Opening Up Education: The Collective Advancement of Education through Open Technology, Open Content, and Open Knowledge,” CC BY-NC-ND—but unfortunately the No Derivatives term prevents remixing and adaptation for different contexts and needs. The ability to change and build on educational resources is a freedom that educators, students and researchers find not only incredibly useful but integral to the nature of their work. We hope to see more in this vein from both H-Net and MIT Press in the future!