Open Access Scholarly Materials Guide: Open Licensing

This video demonstrates how to use the Creative Commons license selector. 

Open licenses grant permission for people to reuse and re-distribute copyrighted contents. You can find Creative Commons licensed materials by using the search function on this page. 

The video below explains how to use the search function at the 5:24 mark. 

Open licensing facilitates sharing by explicating permission to access, reuse, and re-distribute a copyrighted work with what (if any) restrictions. Creative Commons, a non-profit organization, has created six licenses for copyright holders to grant permission so that others can use their works under specified conditions:

• Attribution license
• Attribution-ShareAlike license
• Attribution-NoDerivatives license
• Attribution-NonCommercial license
• Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license
• Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license

Additionally, there is the CC0 (No Rights Reserved) tool that enables copyright holders to waive all rights and place a work in the public domain. Visit this page for more information about the licenses. View this page for examples of how Creative Commons licenses have been used in real life. 

A tool is available to help copyright holders choose an appropriate Creative Commons license to share their works. 

This short video explains the six Creative Commons licenses and how they facilitate sharing of copyrighted materials.

The Open Data Commons has made available these licenses especially for data sharing:

• Attribution License
• Open Database License
• Public Domain Dedication and License

There is a licenses FAQ for users. 

This video walks you through the steps of choosing an appropriate license for data sharing. 

Open-licensed data is available for reuse and research analysis.  You can find open-licensed data by using these resources:

• DataCite Metadata Search
• Dataverse
• Dryad
• Zenodo