How to Choose the Best Creative Commons License for Open Access Content
Whether you have just heard about the open access movement for the first time, want to increase the impact and reuse of your published content, or just want to make sure you have adequate protections for your copyrighted material, choosing a Creative Commons license can be a good place to start. But unless you work in copyright law, copyright and licensing can be very confusing, and it’s important to understand the pros and cons of applying the different Creative Commons licenses to your work. In today’s blog, I will break down the pros and cons of the different Creative Commons licenses to help you make an informed decision about which license to select.
Please note that the information in this article is for informational purposes only and should not be considered legal advice.
What types of content can I apply a Creative Commons license to?
Fortunately, Creative Commons licenses can be applied to most original works, including journals, articles, magazines, books, images, videos, graphs, and more. Applying a Creative Commons license to any of these works is important if you want to add additional protections to your Intellectual Property (IP), beyond what IP rights can provide, but still keep your content as open as possible. Content like software or hardware is some of the only content that would not benefit from a Creative Commons license, and instead be better suited to free licenses from Free Software Foundation or open source licenses by the Open Source Initiative, among others.
If you want to publish your work traditionally, it is worth noting that publishers, journals, magazines, and other content-housing organizations will likely have their own copyright stipulations, so it will be important to research and understand the specific copyright of where you want to publish before signing any contracts.
In addition, it is often recommended that if you are housing a variety of various content in one place or under one umbrella, you choose one license to use for the larger entity that also applies to the content within. For example, if you have an academic journal with lots of journal articles, you should choose one license to standardize for the entire journal and all articles within. This will ensure that your license is easily identifiable and simple to understand for any potential reusers, which increases the contents reach.
What are the different license options?
The Creative Commons About CC Licenses page lays out all six of the possible licenses in an easy to understand format, from least restrictive to most restrictive. Below, I will try to break them down even further so you understand exactly what they mean. Before you read ahead, however, there are two important things to ask yourself before choosing a license: What do I want to use this work for, and how will it be used? Using the example of a scholarly journal, this means understanding what the journal’s goals are, and how the articles within might be reused or adapted by others. For example, if the journal content contains proprietary drawings or building plans, you may want more protections to prevent reusers from turning around and selling those illustrations to construction competitors. If you want teachers to be able to remix the content into a lesson plan, you may want to choose a license with more freedoms to allow those teachers to remix, adapt, and build onto the content as they see fit without worrying about commercial or other restrictions. Thinking in depth about how the content could potentially be used will help you determine the best license to choose. As you review each license below, keep the potential uses in the front of your mind!
CC BY
The CC BY 4.0, or Attribution 4.0 International license, is the most open license available and the one that many of us in the open access space recommend. This is because it allows for the most broad reuse, which supports the mission of open access and contributes to a rich public domain. This license will allow anyone to reuse your content so long as they give credit to the original user (which is you, or your authors if you are a content manager). This means that the reuser can use the content in numerous ways: remixing it with other content, building upon the material, selling it commercially, adapting it to fit their needs, and distributing it to others. The only requirement is that the reuser must give credit to the original author(s) of the content (denoted by the “attribution”), regardless of how they reuse it.
There are a lot of pros to this license. It is the easiest license for reusers to understand, encourages a broad level of reuse and therefore more derivative works, and makes the impact and reach of the work greater. With more options for reuse, more people have the opportunity to benefit from the content without worrying about potential barriers. CC BY is the license I typically recommend for most open access works, since it is the most accessible.
There are a few considerations when choosing this license, however. CC BY might not be the right fit for your content if you have concerns about ways the content might be used, for example if you need to prevent people from selling it or remixing it in any way to maintain the integrity or intent of the content. Some content may benefit from extra protections if the openness of the content would pose ethical or moral concerns. While the openness is certainly a plus, it is worth considering other options if your content needs more protections.
CC BY-SA
The CC BY-SA 4.0, or the Attribution-Sharealike 4.0 International license, permits the same level of reuse as the CC BY but with the added requirement of Sharealike in addition to attribution. This means that anyone who reshares the content must always credit the original user, but they must also share the content under the same license. For example, I can still take a journal article and adapt it into a course format for my students, but I have to share that course under the same CC BY-SA 4.0 license. This license essentially prevents content from ever being “formally” published, which is good for preventing misuse in theory. However, I have found that the Sharealike license can unfortunately create a lot of barriers to reuse, and can also pose concerns for the content’s credibility. As an example, Wikipedia primarily uses the CC BY-SA license for their content.
This license is more limiting, and particularly when remixing the content with other licensed content. For example, mixing content that is licensed under a CC BY-SA and content licensed under a CC BY-NC-SA is not always possible unless you include the attribution for different licenses where that content appears. The Sharealike license is also not compatible with some other open access licenses that are not part of the Creative Commons suite, so remixing content that has another license won’t always be possible. This is cited to be a particular problem when it comes to remixing source code, for example. It is generally advised to avoid CC BY-SA if publishing technical content that contains code, or to avoid Creative Commons licenses in general if publishing any kind of software.
While it can’t always be avoided, I generally recommend steering clear of this license unless using it is necessary (for example, if you are remixing our own content with a CC BY-SA). It is confusing for both authors and reusers, and is a more limiting license than it appears. If authors or journal managers have specific concerns about the content being used commercially, a BY-NC or Attribution-NonCommercial license may be more appropriate. Similarly, if there are concerns about not remixing or adapting the content, a BY-ND or Attribution-NoDerivatives license may be the best choice.
CC BY-NC
The CC BY-NC 4.0, or Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International license, ensures that the content is both credited and protected from commercial use while still allowing fairly open reuse. Reusers can add to the content, remix it, share it, and copy it, so long as you give credit to the original creator(s). However, a key feature of the NonCommercial aspect is that you cannot gain monetary benefit or profit from reusing the content in any way, such as selling it.
This license can protect or deter works from being sold for profit, particularly if the works contain proprietary information such as building plans, product designs, financial data, business strategies, or other information that may need additional protections. However, it is important to consider that other methods can be used to omit private information prior to publishing content that may be preferred, for example, using aliases instead of names or omitting trade secrets altogether.
Creators I work with often have concerns about using open licenses such as CC BY when they think their content might be adapted and sold for profit. If you want to prevent this, then the CC BY-NC may work well for your content. However, I have found that it is generally unlikely that someone will take content that has a CC BY license and redistribute it for profit. We do see it happen occasionally, but when it does, the content still exists in some format freely available, which defeats the purpose of trying to sell it when it can be accessed for free in a different place!
The CC BY-NC license can also be used to protect data that may pose ethical concerns if it were to be sold, such as datasets with genetic information being sold to insurance companies, for example. If you are unsure whether the content could be used in a way that may pose ethical concerns, the NonCommercial license might be a safe bet.
Every license has its trade-offs, and the NonCommercial is no different. One major con of the NonCommercial license is that it prevents reuse in any situation that may be seen as “profit-making”, even if the profit is made indirectly. For example, content that is adapted to a college course may be seen as commercial if students are paying for the course, so the license would limit this kind of reuse. This license can get tricky in situations where you may need to print the content, for example, if a reader is requesting a print-on-demand copy. The reader will have to pay to print it, which can be prohibited due to the publisher being seen as gaining profit even though technically the reader is only paying for the printing. While it may be best to err on the side of caution when selecting a license, content that is intended for educational use may be better suited to a more open license like CC BY.
CC BY-NC-SA
Here is where the licenses get a little trickier! The CC BY-NC-SA 4.0, or the Attribution-NonCommercial-Sharealike 4.0 International license requires three things: reusers must credit the original author(s), reusers must not profit from the content, and reusers must use the same license on any derivatives that are made from the original content. This is a less permissive license, and is generally not recommended except in the case of certain types of content and specific situations.
This license is commonly used for Open Educational Resources (aka OER) when the creator(s) want the content to be reusable and credited, but commercialization is not encouraged, and creator(s) also want any derivatives to have the same open protections. Some Wikipedia content falls under this umbrella, similar to the CC BY-NC license, as well as many open access textbooks, research papers, coursework, and other similar materials. You may also find some community-based projects with this license, like resource lists or maps intended for community support.
CC BY-ND
The CC BY-ND, or the Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 license, is one of the less permissive licenses available. With the NoDerivatives, it allows sharing of the content so long as the creator(s) or author(s) are credited, but does not allow any changes to be made to the original content. Reusers cannot adapt, remix, or build upon the content and redistribute it in its new form. This license can make sense for content that is not intended to be changed, but can be very limiting for other types of content.
Some pros to this license are that it can preserve materials that are meant to be shared in their original form: art, historical documents, datasets, and some images or photographs where the content should not be altered. This license generally applies when the integrity of the content is important, and the creator(s) wish to protect the original intent or accurate representation of the content. Historical content and any content that may pose ethical concerns if it is remixed may benefit from using this license.
This license can, however, prevent many types of reuse that might benefit the public. If the content is meant to be built upon, updated, or used for a creative purpose, this license would create barriers to those types of reuse. It also limits the potential for translation if the intended audience uses a different language than the content’s original language. For any non-native English speakers in the United States, this license could prevent them from being able to fully access and understand the content in their native language.
CC BY-NC-ND
The final Creative Commons license is the CC BY-NC-ND, or the Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International license. As you may guess from its long title, this is the most restrictive of all of the licenses and creates the most barriers to access, use, and reuse. This license requires that the user credit the original creator(s) or author(s), does not use the content to gain a profit, and does not change the content at all. The redeeming factor of this license, and the reason it is still technically an “open access” license, is because it still ensures that the content can be freely available and viewable. However, that doesn’t make it any less restrictive!
While this license is still used in some contexts—most often, for a small number of textbooks, data sets, or articles—it is highly discouraged by promoters of open access content. It prevents many different forms of reuse, including any adaptation or addition at all, any use in situations where someone is making a profit (even if it is not the reuser, necessarily,) and can create accessibility and ethical barriers due to uses like translation being prohibited.
For these reasons, it is highly discouraged that an author would choose this license for any scholarly content due to its overly restrictive nature. An article using this license would prevent research from being debated, built upon, or reproduced, which wouldn’t make a lot of sense for scholarly research, seeing as that is what research is for! Though some creators may choose to use this license, I generally recommend avoiding it and opting for a more truly “open” license.
CC0
And lastly, I bring you one bonus license! Technically, the CC0 or Creative Commons Zero is the seventh license possible in the suite of Creative Commons licenses. Thankfully, this license is the easiest to understand and explain. The CC0 is a tool that puts your work in the full public domain, allowing anyone to do what they wish with the content with no restrictions. This means that reusers don’t even have to credit you to use the content.
Public Domain Day (which happens to fall on New Years Day, or January 1st), is the day that many of us bookish folk excitedly look forward to in the new year to see what new works “went public”. It’s essentially wall street for book nerds. Content generally enters the public domain around 70 years after the original creator passes, and many notable works entered the public domain this year such as Ernest Hemingway's “A Farewell to Arms” and the classic music by Nacio Herb Brown with lyrics by Arthur Freed "Singin' in the Rain."
Once something goes “public”, attribution is simply a courtesy and best practice but is no longer legally required. Though, many old popular works are well-known by the time they go public, and are easily recognizable to the point where it doesn’t really need accreditation. Last year, for example, Disney’s copyright on their first iteration of Mickey Mouse—Steamboat Willie—expired and became part of the public domain. Even without credit, it would be hard to not recognize the iconic mouse!
But before you decide to throw your content into the sea of public domain works, you may want to consider if you will ever want to expand upon that content in the future. While putting work in the public domain promotes creativity, innovation, and offers the most open and accessible way to share content with the public, that content will no longer be considered “yours”. Instead, it will be everyone’s content, free without restriction. So, if you want your work to be out there with no restrictions, CC Zero is the way to go. If you still want ownership and want to retain the opportunity to do something with it later—or to change your mind—you might stick with a license like CC BY.
More Information About CC Licenses
If you still need support, I recommend starting with the Creative Commons Website. Their FAQ has a lot of great commonly asked questions and answers to help you find the information you need to make an informed decision. They even have a Creative Commons License Chooser tool that helps you find the exact license you need! (I should have led with this, shouldn’t I have?) If you still can’t find your answer, I would be more than happy to share my advice and help you figure it out! Feel free to reach out to me via my contact page.
