CC licenses

Creative Commons (CC) licenses allow authors to grant others permission to use their work under specified conditions, while retaining copyright.  Open Access publications almost always have a CC license.  While submitting an article to an Open Access journal via the publisher, you can often choose one of the CC licenses that the publisher offers.

An overview of the various CC licenses

License Designation

License Name

What does this mean for you as an author?

CC BYAttributionThe most liberal of the CC licenses apart from CC0 Public Domain Dedication. This license allows others to distribute, remix, tweak, and build upon a work – also commercially – provided they credit the author for the original creation and clearly indicate that changes were made to the work, if any. 
CC BY-SAAttribution ShareAlike

Similar to CC BY; however, others must license new creations under identical terms. Therefore, all new works reusing (parts of) such work will need to carry the same license and any derivatives will also allow commercial use. 

ShareAlike condition applies only to derivative works, not to collections. Including a CC BY-SA license work in a collection does not produce an adaptation, so the collection does not have to be licensed via a CC BY-SA. 

CC BY-NDAttribution NoDerivativesThis license allows for redistribution, commercial and non-commercial use, provided it is passed along unchanged and in whole, with credit to the author.
CC BY-NCAttribution Non-CommercialWith this license others must not remix, tweak, or build upon the work for commercial purposes. Although new works must also acknowledge the author and be non-commercial, reusers do not have to license their derivative works under the same terms. 
CC BY-NC-SAAttribution Non-Commercial ShareAlikeThis license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon the author’s work non-commercially, provided they credit the author and license their new creations under the identical terms. 
CC BY-NC-NDAttribution Non-Commercial NoDerivativesThis is the most restrictive of the six licenses, only allowing others to download works and share them with others as long as they credit the author, but they cannot change them in any way or use them commercially. 

This table is reproduced with small alterations from Martin Paul Eve (2014), Open Access and the Humanities: Contexts, Controversies and the Future (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Alterations (merging 2 columns and small changes to the text) were based on the changes made by Braak, de Jonge, Trentacosti, Verhagen & Woutersen-Windhouwer (2024), Guide to Creative Commons Licenses for Scholarly Publications and Educational Resources. Licensed under a CC BY license.

If you’re not sure which license is the best fit for your work, try the Chooser Tool from Creative Commons or check out this guide on CC licenses.

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