Creative Commons licenses are agreements that enable authors to specify the conditions under which the public can use their work, while retaining their rights to it.
They play an important role for publishing in Open Access: when an author submits his work, he should be aware of which license is required by the publisher or whether he can choose between the various Creative Commons licenses.
There are several types of licenses which provide different kinds of permissions and terms of use:
- CC BY, Creative Commons Attribution: it states that a piece of work can be shared and modified provided that the correct authorship of the work is attributed.
- CC BY-SA, Creative Commons Attribution Share-alike: it provides the same conditions as CC BY with the addition that if the content of the work is modified, it must be shared under the same license as the original material.
- CC BY-NC, Creative Commons Non-Commercial: it incorporates the CC BY by adding the condition that the work must not be used for commercial purposes.
- CC BY-ND, Creative Commons No-Derivatives: it prescribes that an author’s work can be shared, on condition that legitimate attribution is provided, but that no derivative works must be created.
- CC BY-NC-SA, Creative Commons Non-Commercial Share-alike: it states that, for a work to be shared and modified, appropriate credit to the author must be given, it should not be used for commercial purposes and, if modified, there is the need to share it under the same license as the original one.
- CC BY-NC-ND, Creative Commons Non-Commercial No-Derivatives: it permits for a piece of work to be shared, on condition that authorship is attributed to the author, that it is not used for commercial purposes and that no derivative works are made.
- CC0: it occurs when an author waives his rights and leaves the work in the public domain.
