UM Open Access Publishing with Transformative Agreements: Creative Commons Licenses

Creative Commons licenses give everyone from individual creators to large institutions a standardized way to grant the public permission to use their creative work under copyright law. 

CC provides an author flexibility (for example, they might choose to allow only non-commercial uses of a given work) and protects the people who use or redistribute an author's work from concerns of copyright infringement as long as they abide by the conditions that are specified in the license by which the author distributes the work.

There are six types of Creative Commons licenses. They offer tools for creators to indicate which usage rights of  their works are granted to the public. The classification is based on a combination of four conditions, namely: Attribution, Share-alike, Non-commercial, and No derivative work.  

	Attribution (BY) All CC licenses require that others who use your work in any way must give you credit the way you request, but not in a way that suggests you endorse them or their use. If they want to use your work without giving you credit or for endorsement purposes, they must get your permission first.		Share-alike (SA) You let others copy, distribute, display, perform, and modify your work, as long as they distribute any modified work on the same terms. If they want to distribute modified works under other terms, they must get your permission first.
	Non-commercial (NC) You let others copy, distribute, display, perform, and (unless you have chosen NoDerivs) modify and use your work for any purpose other than commercially unless they get your permission first.		No derivative work (ND) You let others copy, distribute, display, and perform only original copies of your work. If they want to modify your work, they must get your permission first

• Six Licenses for Sharing Your Work by Creative Commons under CC0.

License Name		Copy & Redistribute	Attribution	Commercial Use	Modify & Remix	Change License
Attribution (CC BY)		Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Attribution ShareAlike (CC BY-SA)		Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	No
Attribution-NonCommercial (CC BY-NC)		Yes	Yes	No	Yes	Yes
Attribution-NoDerivs (CC BY-ND)		Yes	Yes	Yes	No	Yes
Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike (CC BY-NC-SA)		Yes	Yes	No	Yes	No
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs (CC BY-NC-ND)		Yes	Yes	No	No	Yes

Creative Commons also provides options for placing a work in the public domain. CC0 enables scientists, educators, artists and other creators and owners of copyright- or database-protected content to waive those interests in their works and thereby place them as completely as possible in the public domain, so that others may freely build upon, enhance and reuse the works for any purposes without restriction under copyright or database law. If a work is already in the public domain, the Public Domain Mark can be assigned to the work to make it easily discoverable and available to the public.

License Name		Copy & Redistribute	Attribution	Commercial Use	Modify & Remix	Change License
CC0		Yes	No	Yes	Yes	Yes
Public Domain Mark		Yes	No	Yes	Yes	Yes

• The Creative Commons License Chooser can guide you to choose the most suitable Creative Commons license for your work. 
• You can also find the Frenquently Asked Question on Creative Commons.

• Creative Commons (CC) is an American non-profit organzation devoted to educational access and expanding the range of creative works available for others to build upon legally and to share.  The organization has released the Creative Common licenses, which allow authors of creative works to communicate which rights they reserve and which rights they waive for the benefit of recipients or other creators.