Choosing a Creative Commons Licence for your resource

Creative Commons licenses provide a simple, standardized way to grant copyright permissions for creative and academic works; while ensuring proper attribution; and allowing others to copy, distribute, and make use of those works.

When you are choosing a Creative Commons licence, it is important to think carefully about how you want your resource to be used, as different licences provide different permissions.

If you are considering using a Non-Commercial licence, which will prevent anyone from using your resource for commercial purposes, you may find that applying a Share-Alike licence will meet your needs by ensuring that any new work incorporating yours must also be made freely available under the same licence for others to use and re-mix.

If you are considering using a No-Derivatives licence, it is important to be aware that this will significantly limit how your resource can be reused, as this licence prevents the resources from being altered in any way.  There may be good reasons for choosing this licence, e.g. if the content of your resource could potentially become misleading if it was changed in any way, however we recommend that you think carefully before choosing this licence.

You can use the Creative Commons Licence Chooser to select the licence you want to use, or refer to the information below.

Creative Commons Licence Types

Here is an explanation of what each licence allows, alongside the short hand text and logo images used to mark specific Creative Commons licences.

Creative Commons – Attribution – CC BY

A CC BY, or Attribution licence, allows anyone to re-mix, re-use and re-share the work, as long as attribution is provided to the creator.

Creative Commons – Attribution Share Alike – CC BY-SA

A CC BY-SA, or Share Alike licence, allows anyone to re-mix, re-use, and re-share, so long as attribution is provided to the creator and any new work is re-shared freely under the same licence. This licence permits commercial use.

Creative Commons – Attribution Non Commercial Share Alike – CC BY-NC-SA

The CC BY-NC-SA licence allows the work to be re-mixed, re-used, and re-shared so long as  attribution is provided to the creator, the work is not used for commercial purposes, and any new work is re-shared freely under the same licence.

Creative Commons – Attribution Non Commercial – CC BY-NC

The CC BY-NC, or Non Commercial licence, allows the work to be re-used and remixed, and re-shared, as long as attribution is provided to the creator and the work is not used for commercial purposes.

Creative Commons – Attribution No Derivatives – CC BY-ND

A CC BY-ND, or Non-Derivative licence, allows anyone to re-use and re-share the work, as long as credit is provided to the creator, and no changes are made to the original work. This licence permits commercial use.

Creative Commons – Attribution Non-Commercial No-Derivatives – CC BY-NC-ND

The CC BY-NC-ND license allows the work to be re-used and re-shared, so long as attribution is provided to the creator, the work is not used for commercial purposes, and no changes are made to the original work.

Creative Commons – Zero / CC0

CC0 is a public dedication tool that means the rights holder has waived all copyright protection rights and placed the work in the public domain. This means the resource can be used for any purpose, commercial or non-commercial, without the need for attribution.

 

Further Information

Understanding open licences

Creative Commons About the Licences

Creative Commons Licence Chooser

Creative Commons FAQ