Creative Commons

This Journal is published under a Creative Commons licence

What is Creative Commons?

Creative Commons (CC) is a way for creators and authors to make their work more readily available and useable. Under the usual copyright laws authors, creators and publishers are provided with an automatic monopoly, in other words all rights are reserved in terms of the use of the work. CC licences make it possible for works to have some (i.e. not all) rights reserved. CC licences allow others to copy and reuse work without seeking permission, as the creator has already authorised this in advance. This removes the barrier that stands between a creative work and a prospective user of that work. It is often difficult, sometimes impossible, to locate the owner of a work to seek their permission. If approval to copy is given in advance, the process is simplified.

There are six main CC licences. These are formed by combining the four licence conditions (below), a creator will identify their conditions enabling the work to be used in various ways (e.g. Attribution Share Alike).

For example, a CC licence may insist only that the creator of a work be attributed or credited when the work is reused, without demanding anything further. Or, an artist or author may combine CC licence conditions to allow users to adapt their work, share it with others, or use it for non-commercial purposes.

License Conditions

CC divides the bundle of rights contained in copyright law into manageable portions, offering four licence conditions. Creators choose a set of conditions they wish to apply to their work.

Attribution: You let others copy, distribute, display, and perform your copyrighted work – and derivative works based upon it – but only if they give credit the way you request.

Share Alike: You allow others to distribute derivative works only under a license identical to the license that governs your work.

Noncommercial: You let others copy, distribute, display, and perform your work – and derivative works based upon it – but for noncommercial purposes only.

No Derivative Works: You let others copy, distribute, display, and perform only verbatim copies of your work, not derivative works based upon it.

To find out more about CC licences go to creativecommons.org/about/licenses

Creative Commons