This page is designed to help you create content for teaching and research that is made to be shared and re-used by others. This page contains, information on how to apply the Creative Commons licenses to content you create, some methods for creating and sharing your content with others, as well as links to additional resources about Creative Commons licensing.
The Open Washington website also has a great Attribution Builder to help you create a customized attribution for any work that you can associate with your created content.
What do the CC licenses mean for someone who is creating educational content for teaching and research?
Each license will have a different impact on how your content can be used by others, so let's look at each license individually.
Attribution only or CC-BY License
This license lets you distribute, remix, tweak, and build upon the licensed work, even commercially, as long as you credit the original creation/creator. This is the most open license, you can re-use the content in any way, even in a commercial endeavor as long as you give proper credit to the content creator.
Just a few of the options for re-mixing CC-BY licensed content
When finished with remixing and revising, you only have to cite the creator, then you could
These are just a few examples, this is not an exhaustive list of how you can remix and reuse CC-BY licensed content. The work that you create from this content can be licensed with any of the CC licenses.
Attribution-ShareAlike or CC BY-SA
This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon your work even for commercial purposes, as long as they credit you and license their new creations under the identical terms. All new works based on yours will carry the same license, so any derivatives will also allow commercial use.
This license is as open as the CC-BY license, others can remix all they want (see the CC-By license for suggestions) as long as they ALSO share the final content under the same license structure.
This is the license used by Wikipedia and the Wikimedia Commons. It is recommended for materials that would benefit from incorporating content from Wikipedia and similarly licensed projects. Boundless Books is a good example of a company using Wikipedia content to create a new consumer product. Many of their books contain edited content from Wikipedia, so they have made all of these books available for free from their website, with a CC BY-SA license. They do charge for study materials and if you want a custom book.
This is a very open license in terms of editing, and it also ensures that your content, and any content derived or created upon your content, will continue to be available for others to build upon.
Attribution-NonCommercial or CC BY-NC
This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon your work non-commercially, and although their new works must also acknowledge you and be non-commercial, they don’t have to license their derivative works on the same terms.
Users have the same remixing options as they do with the CC-By license above, but their output must be non-commercial, that is they can't sell it. What is interesting with this license is that they do NOT have to license their created work in the same way, so for example they could license your work as CC-BY, and not include the non-commercial. So subsequent works built on your original work could be commercial.
Some users may be unsure to what level you want to protect your content from commercialization. For example, would it be OK for someone to place a link to your content onto a webpage that has advertising, what about copying your content onto a page that has advertising? Do you view a commercial endeavor as strictly selling that content for profit? Adding specifics about how you do or do not want your content used can be helpful to potential users.
Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike or CC BY-NC-SA
This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon your work non-commercially, as long as they credit you and license their new creations under the identical terms.
Just to recap from above, they have the same remixing options as with the CC-BY license and here are just a few of the options for remixing and building upon CC BY-NC-SA licensed content
And, their output options are really the same; as long as the work is non-commercial (neither you or anyone else can sell the product), they can
Their output must also be licensed CC BY-NC-SA, so that it can be used by others, non-commercially for perpetuity (all future derivatives must also license anything they create with your content as CC BY-NC-SA).
This is a very open license in terms of editing, and it also ensures that your content, and any content derived or created upon your content will continue to be available for others to to build on (through the SA clause) and all subsequent works will be non-commercial.
Some users may be unsure to what level you want to protect your content from commercialization. For example, would it be OK for someone to place a link to your content onto a webpage that has advertising, what about copying your content onto a page that has advertising? Do you view a commercial endeavor as strictly selling that content for profit? Adding specifics about how you do or do not want your content used can be helpful to potential users.
Attribution-NoDerivs or CC BY-ND
This license allows for redistribution, commercial and non-commercial, as long as it is passed along unchanged and in whole, with credit to you.
The Non-derivative license is a bit more complicated, because there is some question about what constitutes a "derivative." This license will allow others to redirect students to your content, and will make that content available to the general population, but it is not open to change or to being used in other systems.
Some users tend to stay away from ND content because they are not sure how they can use it. To assist users you can add additional text to your source pages letting them know what use permissions you are granting (for example - just to link to your content, to use the pages within another system as long as they are not altered, change formatting but not content). Because of the uncertainty, it is best to make your intentions clear on your content sources.
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs or CC BY-NC-ND
This license is the most restrictive of our six main licenses, only allowing others to download your works and share them with others as long as they credit you, but they can’t change them in any way or use them commercially.
The Non-derivative license is a bit more complicated, because there is some question about what constitutes a "derivative." It is not clear that if you take this content and then place it into a system (like D2L or even onto your own website) that you are (or are not) creating a derivative.
Some users tend to stay away from ND content because they are not sure how they can use it. To assist users you can add additional text to your source pages letting them know what uses permissions you are granting (for example - just to link to your content, to use the pages within another system as long as they are not altered, change formatting but not content). Because of the uncertainty, it is best to make your intentions clear on your content sources.
Some users may be unsure to what level you want to protect your content from commercialization. For example, would it be OK for someone to place a link to your content onto a webpage that has advertising, what about copying your content onto a page that has advertising? Do you view a commercial endeavor as strictly selling that content for profit? Adding specifics about how you do or do not want your content used can be helpful to potential users.
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This is a very basic review of what you can do with CC licensed content. If you would like further information, contact your liaison librarian.
Disclaimer: This information on Copyright, Fair Use and Creative Commons Licensing should be read for informational purposes only. This site nor any of its contents constitute legal advice.
"Creative Commons 4.0 licenses" by University of Oklahoma Libraries is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0
