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Introduction
Creative Commons (CC) is an international non-profit organisation that aims to make licensing your work simple so that individuals, educational institutions, and other organisations know how to use it. The CC concept is based on the idea of “some rights reserved” rather than “all rights reserved” providing a balance between the creators and the consumers. Adding a CC licence allows the creator to give a clear indication of how their work can be used, reused and distributed, while copyright can remain with the creator.
Types
Creative Commons licences can be used for any type of work. Essentially there are four different licence terms – attribution (BY), no derivative works (ND), share alike (SA) and non-commercial (NC).
Combinations of these four licence terms define the permissions for users and create specific licences which you can assign to your work. The Licences are as follows,
| Licence | Description |
| CC-BY | Allows others to distribute and build upon your work, even commercially but they must credit you as the original creator. |
| CC BY-SA | Allows others to re-use and build upon your work even for commercial purposes but they must credit you and licence any newly created works under identical CC Licence terms. |
| CC BY-ND | Allows others to redistribute commercially and non-commercially as long as it remains unchanged and whole, with full credit to you. |
| CC BY-NC | Allows others to re-use and build upon your work non-commercially. Any new works must acknowledge you as the original creator, use must only be non-commercial but they can licence their new works under any CC licence. |
| CC BY-NC-SA | Allows others to re-use and build upon your work non-commercially but they must credit you as the original creator and licence any newly created works under an identical CC licence. |
| CC BY-NC-ND | The most restrictive licence. Allows others to copy your work and share it but they must credit you, not change it in any way and must only use it non-commercially. |
CC0 licence indicates that content can be used freely without any restrictions at all, including the requirement to attribution. By applying CC0 to their works the creator waivers all rights to be associated with it.
Licence your work
It is simple to add a Creative Commons Licence to your work. Once you have visited the Creative Commons website and chosen a licence that is appropriate, you can download the logo for the specific licence from their website and add this to the work. You can embed the licence title (for example, CC BY-NC-ND) into images. You can also embed the HTML code in your webpages.
You don’t need to register the licence, simply start to assign it using the title/symbols/logo/link to the CC licence. Only the copyright holder or someone with express permission from the copyright holder can apply a CC licence to the work. If you have created a work as part of your employment, be aware you may not be the copyright holder.
Websites can be licenced at the footer with a simple statement, for example, Unless otherwise noted, content on this site is licenced under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Further guidance on how to mark CC licences to work is available in this guide.
When assigning a licence remember it cannot be revoked. It is worth considering the licences to ensure you choose the right one.
Creative Commons and Research
Academic staff and researchers should be aware that REF, UKRI, Wellcome Trust and European policies mandate the use of Creative Commons licences for certain publications. Jisc have produced guidance on Creative Commons and Copyright for UKRI-funded authors writing for publications.
Finding CC Material
Once you understand the various Creative Commons licences you can search and use licensed works. Many search engines and websites will let you limit your search to only CC licensed materials.
Images
Video, Music and Sounds
