Licences
When making your work available open access, you may have a choice as to which terms to apply to others' use of your work. This choice is usually expressed via Creative Commons licences. These are available from most publishers, and using them within publications is an established and simple way to indicate your requirements.
The following Creative Commons licences are commonly seen:
CC BY, Creative Commons Attribution licence
This is the most permissive licence used in publishing, specifying that if others use your work they should attribute it to you.
CC BY-NC, Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial licence
This limits the above licence to re-use in non-commercial contexts.
CC BY-NC-ND, Creative Commons Non-Commercial No Derivatives licence
This is a variant of the CC BY-NC licence. It specifies that others cannot create changed versions, or 'derivatives' of your work.
CC BY-NC-SA, Creative Commons Non-Commercial Share Alike licence
This is a further variant of the CC BY-NC licence. It specifies that if others do create changed versions of your work, then these should be released under the same licence.
Creative Commons images by Creative Commons are licensed under CC BY 4.0.
Your funder may have requirements around which licences should be applied. Your funder may have requirements of the license you select as part of the conditions of funding the cost of the APC. Check our University & funder open access policies webpage for more details.
Some publishers may also specify the licence that is applied to their works when shared through green open access, for example Elsevier specifies that a CC BY-NC-ND licence is required. If you are unsure, you don’t have to specify a licence for your green open access deposit.
See our copyright webpages for more detailed information.