A Guide to Creative Commons Licenses
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A Guide to Creative Commons Licenses
Creative Commons (CC) licenses provide a simple, standardised way for researchers, scientists, and institutions to grant the public permission to use their copyrighted work. For anyone reusing scholarly outputs, a CC license answers the essential question: “What am I allowed to do with this work?”
In Open Science, where transparency, reuse, and collaboration are central, understanding CC licenses helps you both share your own work responsibly and confidently reuse the work of others.
Types of CC Licenses
Below is an overview of each CC license from the most open to the most restrictive to help you understand how research and data can be shared and reused.
(1) CC BY: Attribution
You can:
Share, remix, adapt, and build upon the material in any medium or format
Use it commercially or non-commercially
Only requirement:
BY: Give credit to the creator
Best for: Supporting Open Access research, allowing educators and students to freely adapt materials, maximising the reach and impact of your work by enabling use for any purpose, and promoting innovation through remixes, translations, and new creations.
(2) CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike
You can:
Share, remix, adapt, and build upon the work in any medium or format for non-commercial purposes only
Only requirement:
BY: Give credit to the creator
NC: No commercial reuse
Best for: Creators who want their work to stay Open for all uses, including commercial ones, and ensure that any derivatives remain Open too.
(3) CC BY-NC: Attribution–NonCommercial
You can:
Share, remix, adapt, and build upon the work in any medium or format for non-commercial purposes only
Only requirement:
BY: Give credit to the creator
NC: No commercial reuse
Best for: Creators who want their work widely shared, adapted, and built upon for personal, educational, or non-profit use, while preventing others from making a profit from it.
(4) CC BY-NC-SA: Attribution–NonCommercial–ShareAlike
You can:
Share, remix, adapt for non-commercial use only, and the modified material must be licensed under identical terms
Only requirement:
BY: Give credit to the creator
NC: No commercial reuse
SA: The adaptations of the work must be shared under the same license
Best for: Creators who want broad non-commercial use, remixing, and sharing of their work as long as they are credited and any adaptations stay under the same Open terms, making it a strong fit for Open Educational Resources, community projects, and other non-profit creative efforts.
(5) CC BY-ND: Attribution–NoDerivatives
You can:
Copy and share the work, even commercially, in unadapted form only
Only requirement:
BY: Give credit to the creator
ND: No remixes or adaptations
Best for: Writers of finished reports and official documents or other creators who want to maintain full control over how their work is presented, allowing wide sharing but only in its original, unaltered form, preventing remixes, translations, or adaptations.
(6) CC BY-NC-ND: Attribution–NonCommercial–NoDerivatives
You can:
Copy and distribute verbatim copies of the material for non-commercial use only
Only requirement:
BY: Give credit to the creator
NC: No commercial reuse
ND: No remixes or adaptations
Best for: Creators who want to share their work but put great emphasis on preventing adaptations, remixes, or commercial exploitation, making it ideal for photographs or personal projects where integrity and original form are paramount.
(7) CC0: No Rights Reserved
CC0 (also called CC Zero) is a public domain dedication that allows creators to waive their copyright and release their work worldwide, letting anyone freely copy, modify, remix, and use it in any way, with no restrictions.
The creator allows:
All uses, commercial or non-commercial
Remixing, adapting, building upon
No conditions
Best for: Creators who want to permanently and irrevocably surrender all copyright and related rights to their work, allowing anyone to use, modify, distribute, and build upon it for any purpose. Ideal for scientific and research data, metadata, datasets, public sector information, and resources intended for maximum reuse.
Choosing the Right License
Ask yourself:
How open do I want my work to be?
- Maximum reuse: CC0 or CC BY
- Open Source style: CC BY-SA
Do I want to allow commercial reuse?
- Yes: CC BY, CC BY-SA, CC BY-ND
- No: Any license with NC
Am I comfortable with my work being remixed or adapted?
- Yes: Avoid ND licenses
- No: Choose ND
Do I want downstream users to share alike?
- Yes: Choose SA
- No: Choose any license without SA
If you are unsure, the Creative Commons License Chooser can help clarify your intention and recommend a license.
Before Licensing your Work
- Ensure you own the copyright: If the work was created as part of your employment or a funded project, the institution or funder may hold the rights.
- Understand that CC licenses are irrevocable: Once people receive your work under a CC license, they can continue to use it under that license forever, even if you later remove it from circulation.
- Confirm that all components of the work are yours to license: If you used third-party images, datasets, or code, you must respect their licensing terms.
How to Communicate a CC License
- Link to the license: Always include a link to the official CC license page to ensure clarity for users. You can make the text or the CC icon a hyperlink to the correct license deed page.
- Use platform tools: If you are sharing on sites like Flickr or YouTube, use their built-in options to select a CC license. You can learn more here.
- Use icons: You can download and include the official CC icons from here.
- For documents: Consider the Creative Commons Add-in for Microsoft Office for Word documents here.
- For websites: Get machine-readable HTML code from here to embed on your site.
When incorporating other work, attribution is a required license condition and if you don’t provide it, the license permissions don’t apply. Always follow the TASL approach: Title, Author, Source, License, to properly attribute other works you incorporate.
Why CC Licensing Matters for Open Science
- Facilitates transparent, reusable research.
- Supports reproducibility.
- Encourages citizen science and community collaboration.
- Removes legal ambiguity and speeds up knowledge transfer.
- Aligns with funder mandates for Open Access and Open Data.
More Resources
For resources on CC licenses, please check out the following:
