Creative Commons licences

Shaddim; original CC license symbols by Creative Commons, CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), via Wikimedia Commons

Creative Commons licences (CC licences) are part of a licensing model that offers standardised licence agreements. The following four licence modules can be combined according to the modular principle:

  • BY: Attribution
    The author of the work must be named (mandatory module).
  • NC: Non-commercial
    The work may not be used commercially.
  • ND: No derivatives (no derivatives)
    The work may not be modified.
  • SA: Distribution under the same conditions (share alike)
    The work may be modified and distributed, but only under the original licence.

This allows six different licence variants to be created - from the CC BY licence as the most permissive to the CC BY-NC-ND licence as the most restrictive licence.

The benefits of CC BY

We recommend using the Creative Commons ‘CC BY’ licence whenever it is available.

The CC BY licence offers numerous advantages that make it the best choice for open access publications:

  • Maximum reuse and distribution: CC BY allows others to distribute, remix, adapt and build upon your work, even commercially, as long as they credit you as the author. This maximises the reach and impact of your research.

  • Equal commercial use for all: CC BY allows commercial use, but for everyone equally. And since non-commercial use is often interpreted very narrowly, so that even publishing an NC-licensed article on a website with advertising, for example, can be considered a violation of the NC licence terms, it is important to allow this. This may seem strange at first, but it is actually the best protection against exploitation by individual actors. If everyone has the same right to use your work commercially, it prevents individuals from gaining a monopoly or unfairly profiting from it - and thus counteracts current problems such as those related to AI.

  • Alignment with major Open Access declarations: CC BY aligns with the most important Open Access declarations, such as the Berlin Declaration on Open Access. It is also the preferred license of many research funders and organizations worldwide.

  • Legal clarity: CC BY provides clear and unambiguous terms that eliminate legal uncertainties and ensure that your work can be freely used and shared across various platforms and by different target audiences.

>> The CC BY license provides a clear and easily understandable framework for third parties. It enables equal and open use for everyone in accordance with the basic principles of Open Access.

The problem of NC/non-commercial licences

Licenses with the "non-commercial" (NC) designation, such as CC BY-NC or CC BY-NC-ND, may seem appealing at first glance. However, they come with significant disadvantages:

  • Exclusive commercial rights for publishers: While choosing a "non-commercial" license excludes commercial use, publishers typically require you to grant them these reserved commercial rights. Unfortunately, many publishers claim these rights exclusively, thereby limiting your control over your own work.
  • Commercial exploitation by publishers: Once publishers possess the (exclusive) rights for commercial use, they can commercially exploit your research work, including licensing it to AI companies or other commercial entities (also for commercial use), without your consent and without any share in the revenues.
  • Legal uncertainty: The definition of "non-commercial" is not clearly defined under German law. This leads to significant legal uncertainty about whether a particular use is permissible. Very often, usage possibilities are excluded that authors actually don't want to prevent. For example, it's unclear whether and in which cases NC material can be used in collaboration projects between public and private research institutions. Use by freelancers such as doctors, lawyers, architects, or independent research by individuals is clearly not allowed if it serves commercial purposes. Against this background, it becomes clear that NC licenses hinder many desirable uses and thus contradict the basic principle of Open Access.
  • Incompatibility with Open Access definitions: NC-licensed material is by definition not "Open Access." The "Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Scientific Knowledge" requires that Open Access works must be licensed "for any responsible purpose." The commercial use of research results is obviously a legitimate purpose in this context.

>> Non-commercial license types exclude many desired usage possibilities without substantial benefits. They are not true open licenses.