Authors usually transfer certain rights to a publisher, when they publish their work. Traditionally, authors grant the publisher exclusive rights of use when publishing in a subscription journal. In contrast, open access publications ideally involve the granting of non-exclusive rights, and the use of open licences allows for reuse.

In order to make the reuse of open access publications as clear as possible and thus enable greater dissemination of your publications, it is common practice to grant licenses. Creative Commons licenses (open content licenses that can be used free of charge) are particularly common. CC licenses allow others to reuse a work under certain conditions.

Several factors play a role in the selection of a license. However, the degree of openness should always be the crucial factor. The clear recommendation is therefore to choose the CC BY license whenever possible.

Many research funders explicitly recommend publishing project results via open access; for some, this is even mandatory. The Creative Commons licence CC BY is the preferred choice in most cases. As an author, you should ensure that you retain sufficient rights when publishing in order to meet the open access requirements of the respective research funder.