It is important to be very clear that Creative Common licences are not an alternative to copyright. They are built on copyright and last for the same length of term as applicable copyright. The licences permit certain re-uses, enabling the author to specify the conditions of re-use that best suit their needs while ensuring that the work is credited. The different permutations of a Creative Commons licence are described here.

CC BY is the most permissive CC licence, allowing sharing, commercial reuse and modification as long as the original author is credited. Its proponents argue that this gives users the greatest possible degree of flexibility, allowing (among other things) businesses to use published research and, by doing so, potentially encouraging innovation and economic growth.

This is now the default licence that has been chosen by RCUK, Wellcome Trust and other funders. However, the adoption of CC BY as the default licence by funders and publishers alike has caused a great deal of criticism and well as support.

Once a work is published under a Creative Commons licence, the author cannot prevent use under the terms of that licence until the copyright in the work has expired. However, the author, as copyright holder, can make the work available under different terms and conditions.

An author of a work can also waive the existing conditions or grant additional permissions that are not covered by the Creative Commons licence. For example, if a work was assigned a Creative Commons licence with a non-commercial clause and the author is contacted by a publisher who wants to include a chapter of the book in an edited collection which will be sold for profit, this can be permitted. To a certain extent this is similar to the current process with copyright protected works, a licence that is negotiated directly with a publisher, such as a journal big deal, often has far more rights of use that use under normal copyright conditions would allow.

In addition, some publishers who are offering gold open access to recently published journal articles are renegotiating the copyright transfer agreement (which was signed by the author before publication). The ‘Gold for Gold’ option the Royal Society of Chemistry offer a renegotiation of the original agreement by asking the author to sign a new licence to publish agreement before releasing the article from behind a paywall and converting it into an open access article with a CC BY licence.

Thus, Creative Commons licences allow the author, as a creator of content, to be precise about how others may, and may not, use their work. Therefore, the licences are flexible enough to allow the owner of the copyright to say exactly what is and is not allowed, a situation that is not too different from the present situation, however, the important change is that the copyright owner often moves from the publisher to the author.

 

5.1 Creative Commons licences
5.2 Institutional polices and copyright
5.3 Funder mandates
5.4 Third Party rights and author rights
5.5 Commercial Use Questions
5.6 Benefits of publishing with a Creative Commons licence

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.