Creative Commons Kiwi
Creative Commons is a non-profit organisation offering a globally recognised set of copyright licences. The licences allow you to share your work and have it correctly attributed to you.
When you pay an article processing charge (APC) to make your research open access you will be offered a range of Creative Commons (CC) licences to choose from.
UKRI, the Wellcome Trust and other funders have chosen the CC BY licence as a requirement when they fund open access publishing. CC BY is the most permissive Creative Commons licence, allowing sharing, commercial reuse and modification, provided the original author is credited.
If your funder does not specify which licence they require you can choose the one you prefer.
It is important to carefully consider your choice as the more restrictive licences can prevent reuse in academic research and teaching.
The 6 types of Creative Commons licence
| Licence | Type | Permitted use |
|---|---|---|
| CC BY | Attribution | The user is free to copy, distribute, adapt and use the work for commercial and non-commercial purposes provided appropriate credit is given |
| CC BY-SA | Attribution — ShareAlike | As CC BY but the user must share any resulting work under the same licence as the original |
| CC BY-ND | Attribution — NoDerivatives | The user is free to copy, distribute and use the work provided appropriate credit is given. The work may not be adapted or translated and must be passed on whole and unchanged |
| CC BY-NC | Attribution — NonCommercial | As CC BY but the work cannot be used for commercial advantage |
| CC BY-NC-SA | Attribution — NonCommercial — ShareAlike | As CC BY-NC but the user must share any resulting work under the same licence as the original |
| CC BY-NC-ND | Attribution — NonCommercial — NoDerivatives | The user is free to copy, distribute and use the work provided appropriate credit is given. The work may not be adapted or used for commercial advantage |