Scholarly Communication

What is Creative Commons?

• Creative Commons is actually a license that is applied to a work that is protected by copyright.
• It’s not separate from copyright, but instead is a way of easily sharing copyrighted work.
• Creative Commons is a non-profit organization that provides licensing structures people can use to license their copyrighted work to anyone willing to abide by the licensing terms.
• It makes it easy to share work without giving up total control or spending countless hours granting permissions.

 

Creative Commons licences

• Creative Commons licences are public licences.
• A public licence that permits certain uses of copyrighted materials by the public at large.
• If a work you wish to use has been released under a public licence, you do not have to seek additional permission from the rightsholder in order to do the things authorised by the licence. However, you do still need to follow the licence terms.
• For example, the licence may require attribution to the original author or it may forbid commercial uses. 

 

The following descriptions of the Creative Commons licences come from About the Licences by Creative Commons and are licenced under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International licence.

Attribution: CC BY

This licence lets others distribute, remix, tweak, and build upon your work, even commercially, as long as they credit you for the original creation. This is the most accommodating of licences offered. Recommended for maximum dissemination and use of licenced materials.

 

Attribution-ShareAlike: CC BY-SA

This licence lets others remix, tweak, and build upon your work even for commercial purposes, as long as they credit you and licence their new creations under the identical terms. This licence is often compared to “copyleft” free and open source software licences. All new works based on yours will carry the same licence, so any derivatives will also allow commercial use. This is the licence used by Wikipedia, and is recommended for materials that would benefit from incorporating content from Wikipedia and similarly licenced projects.

 

Attribution-NoDerivs: CC BY-ND

This licence allows for redistribution, commercial and non-commercial, as long as it is passed along unchanged and in whole, with credit to you.

 

Attribution-NonCommercial: CC BY-NC

This licence lets others remix, tweak, and build upon your work non-commercially, and although their new works must also acknowledge you and be non-commercial, they don't have to licence their derivative works on the same terms.

 

Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike: CC BY-NC-SA

This licence lets others remix, tweak, and build upon your work non-commercially, as long as they credit you and licence their new creations under the identical terms.

 

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs: CC BY-NC-ND

This licence is the most restrictive of our six main licences, only allowing others to download your works and share them with others as long as they credit you, but they can’t change them in any way or use them commercially.

 

Creative Commons also offers a Public Domain Dedication, known as CC0. You can use CC0 to waive your copyright in a work. For more information about CC0, consult Creative Commons's CC0 FAQ.