Authors' Rights in Scholarly Publishing: Creative Commons Licenses

Creative Commons (CC) licenses grant more rights than traditional publishers, and are often what open access journals use. All CC licenses require that you attribute the original source.

CC BY: Lets others distribute, remix, adapt, and build upon another work, even for commercial purposes.

CC BY-SA: Lets others remix, adapt, and build upon another work, even for commercial purposes, as long as they credit the original work and license their new creations under the same license ("share alike").

CC BY-NC: Lets others remix, adapt, and build upon another work, but only for non-commercial purpose.

CC BY-NC-SA: Lets others remix, adapt, and build upon another work, but only for non-commercial purposes, and only if the new creations are licensed under the same license. 

CC BY-ND: Lets others reuse the work for any purpose, including for commercial purposes, but modifications or adaptations cannot be made.

CC BY-NC-ND: Lets others download a work and allows them to share it with others, but modifications or adaptations cannot be made, and it cannot be used for commercial purposes.

CC0: Not actually a CC license, but a way to designate work as being in the public domain; that is, without copyright.

Source: Creative Commons [Internet]. Mountain View (CA): Creative Commons. About the licenses [cited 2021 Feb 12]. Available from: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/. Information licensed under CC BY 4.0.