Author's Rights: Creative Commons Licenses

Introduction

Creative Commons (CC) is a non-profit organization that provides a set of licenses and tools that creators can use to make their work available for others to use, share, and build upon. A CC license allows the creator of a work to give others permission to use, share, and build upon that work. It is a way for the creator to retain their copyright, while at the same time allowing others to use the work in certain ways without having to ask for permission. There are several different types of CC licenses to choose from, each with different levels of restriction.

Benefit of Creative Commons Licenses

• They allow researchers to share their work more widely and easily, which can increase the reach and impact of their research.
• They allow others to use and build upon existing works, which can lead to the creation of new and innovative research.
• They provide a clear and easy-to-understand framework for how a work can be used, which can help reduce confusion and legal uncertainty.
• They provide a way for researchers to control how their work is used, while still allowing others to use it.

Creative Commons Licenses in Academic Publishing

The three most common Creative Commons (CC) licenses used in academic journals are:

1. CC-BY (Attribution): This license allows others to distribute, remix, tweak, and build upon your work, even commercially, as long as they credit you for the original creation. This is the most permissive of the CC licenses, allowing others to do the most with your work.
2. CC-BY-NC (Attribution-NonCommercial): This license allows others to distribute, 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 license their derivative works on the same terms.
3. CC-BY-NC-ND (Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives): This license allows others to distribute your work unchanged and credit you, but they can’t change it in any way or use it commercially.

It's important to note that these licenses are not mutually exclusive and a journal can use more than one license. Depending on the journal, you may be offered multiple licenses to choose from, or you may be restricted to a single option.

When using a Creative Commons (CC) license like CC-BY-NC or CC-BY-NC-ND for your research, it is important to pay close attention to the terms of the author agreement. Some publishers may require authors to sign an exclusive license agreement, which means that if someone wants to use your work for commercial purposes or create derivatives based on it, they must ask for permission from the publisher, not the author. This is something that should be considered and understood before publishing, as it can limit the rights of the author to use or share their own work.

Types of Creative Commons Licenses

• Attribution (CC BY): This license allows others to distribute, remix, and build upon the work, even commercially, as long as they credit the original creator.
• Attribution-ShareAlike (CC BY-SA): This license allows others to distribute, remix, and build upon the work, even commercially, as long as they credit the original creator and license their new creations under the identical terms.
• Attribution-NoDerivs (CC BY-ND): This license allows others to distribute the work, without changes, as long as they credit the original creator.
• Attribution-NonCommercial (CC BY-NC): This license allows others to remix, build upon the work, non commercially, as long as they credit the original creator.
• Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike (CC BY-NC-SA): This license allows others to remix, build upon the work, non commercially, as long as they credit the original creator and license their new creations under the identical terms.
• Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs (CC BY-NC-ND): This license allows others to share the work, non commercially, as long as they credit the original creator, and not change the work in any way.