LibGuides: Open Access: What to Know: Creative Commons

What is a Creative Commons License

The Creative Commons License is an international publishing standard used to grant rights to use Open Access material. The license code conveys specific things:

BY: Attribution to the original author, all derivatives permitted
SA: Share Alike meaning that derivative works must share the same license
ND: No Derivatives meaning a work can be shared, but not changed
NC: Non-Commercial, allowing a work to be shared and derived, but not for commercial purpose
x.0: these are the legal versions of the license, so to see the differences you must read the fine print of the legal language available from the Creative Commons website.

IFPRI has adopted the CC BY 4.0 license as the default for IFPRI publications. When working with partners, we encourage authors to ask for adoption of the CC BY 4.0 license, but if that is not possible to adopt a license as close as possible to it.

Quick Guide: How to select a suitable open license
This tool has been developed as a quick guide for selecting a suitable license to support open access to your research outputs in line with the CGIAR Open Access
and Data Management Policy and donor policies.

How to Cite for Creative Commons

Best practices for attribution
You can use CC-licensed materials as long as you follow the license conditions. One condition of all CC licenses is attribution. Here are some good (and not so good) examples of attribution.
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CreativeCommons.org contributes to this page.
Citing images with a creative commons license
Images can be licensed under Creative Commons. Learn how to cite images for their license.

Creative Commons

Creative Commons licenses	Description
CC BY 4.0	This license lets others distribute, remix, adapt, and build upon your work, even commercially, as long as they credit you for the original creation. This is the most accommodating of licenses offered. Recommended for maximum dissemination and use of licensed materials.
CC BY-SA 4.0	This license lets others remix, adapt, and build upon your work even for commercial purposes, as long as they credit you and license their new creations under the identical terms. This license is often compared to “copyleft” free and open source software licenses. All new works based on yours will carry the same license, so any derivatives will also allow commercial use. This is the license used by Wikipedia, and is recommended for materials that would benefit from incorporating content from Wikipedia and similarly licensed projects.
CC BY-ND 4.0	This license lets others reuse the work for any purpose, including commercially; however, it cannot be shared with others in adapted form, and credit must be provided to you.
CC BY-NC 4.0	This license lets others remix, adapt, 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.
CC BY-NC-SA 4.0	This license lets others remix, adapt, and build upon your work non-commercially, as long as they credit you and license their new creations under the identical terms.
CC BY-NC-ND 4.0	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.
CC BY 3.0 IGO	The 3.0 license is designed to be used by IGOs. When the Licensor is an intergovernmental organization, disputes will be resolved by mediation and arbitration unless otherwise agreed. All other CC licenses can be used with 3.0, for instance, CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 IGO.