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Open Access: Creative Commons

Creative Commons Licences

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Creative Commons CC offers the licencing options that enable Open Access.  By adopting CC licences, authors permit others to use their published outputs more flexibly. When selecting a licence, we recommend checking if your funding body has specified you use a specific licence.

In short, Creative Commons provides for four different licencing and reuse conditions that, in combination, offer six different licence options.

The four conditions are:

  • Attribution: You must acknowledge (attribute) the original source (This also provides for the avoidance of plagiarism) - Referred to as BY in the short format.
  • Non Commercial: You cannot use the item (or it's derivatives) for commercial or monetary gain - Referred to as NC
  • Share Alike: Anything you create based on this item (e.g. another journal article) you agree to make it openly available (i.e. Open Access and under a CC licence). Referred to as SA
  • No Derivatives: You cannot amend, adjust, or otherwise alter the original work. For example, recolouring a black and white photograph. Referred to as ND

And the six licence types are:

 CC BY (You can do whatever you wish with the work but you must credit the original author. This is the most open licence)

undefined CC BY-SA (You can do whatever you wish with the work but you must credit the original author and agree to share your resultant work)

undefined CC BY-ND (You can reuse the work but you must credit the original author and must not share your resultant work)

undefined CC BY-NC (You can reuse the work but you must credit the original author and must not make money from your resultant work)

undefined CC BY-NC-SA (You can reuse the work but you must credit the original author and share your resultant work under identical terms)

undefined CC BY-NC-ND (You can reuse the work but you must credit the original author, not amend the work, and not make commercial gain from it. This is the most restrictive licence)

 

For more information on selecting the right licence for your research, see the CC licence choosing tool.

Source: The Creative Commons Organisation