How do you choose a license?
Choosing a Creative Commons license depends on how you want others to use your work. You are already on the right track when you choose others to be able to share your work.
Choosing is almost down to two simple questions; You must determine if you want to allow for commercial use, and if you want to allow for adaptions (remix) of your work.
We recommend that you use the very helpful tool, developed by Creative Commons, called the License Chooser to help you choose license.
Below are gathered some important extra notes on applying licenses and answers to some of the questions you might ask.
If you don't find an answer to a question you might have, don't hesitate to contact the Research Support team at Roskilde University Library via rucforsk@kb.dk
Once you have decided on a license for your work, applying it is easy. You simply add it the same way as you add other components on your article in a footer or header, like the DOI or page number.
These two parts should at least be covered:
Legal Code: The legal code is the full, legally binding text of the license. It provides the precise terms and conditions under which the work is licensed. This is the portion that lawyers and other legal professionals would refer to for detailed information.
License Title: The specific version of the Creative Commons license is usually indicated in the title, such as "Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License." The version number is important because it reflects the terms and conditions of the license.
You can follow this example from Elsevier:
or maybe even better this example from a Danish research journal:
Creative Commons advises creators against using CC licenses for software. This recommendation is based on the existence of numerous effective free and open-source software licenses designed specifically for this purpose. The software-sharing ecosystem is already robust, offering a variety of excellent open-source licenses to suit different needs. For further details on why Creative Commons discourages the application of its licenses to software, refer to this FAQ section on their website.
No, you cannot.
You can stop sharing the work yourself, but you cannot make the places where your work is already shared take it down.
Choose wisely.
Choices, created by Derek Bruff, link, license CC BY-NC 2.0
If someone is using your licensed work without giving credit to you or otherwise not following the license, they are potentially liable for copyright infringement. There are some exceptions to this; If the person using the work in connection to Fair use or rely on some other exception to copyright, it might be OK.
Also remember that the international variations in copyright laws impact Creative Commons licenses because these licenses rely on copyright law as their foundation. When someone applies a Creative Commons license to their work, they are essentially leveraging copyright law to grant permissions beyond what might be the default under traditional copyright.
Since this is not a page where we can give legal advice we suggest that you find help directly via Creative Commons FAQ about misuse.
If you yourself is using material under Fair use terms, the kind gesture is to give credit to the creator, even though it is not required.
Except where otherwise noted (e.g. illustrations, videos and pictures), content on this site is licensed under a CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.
CC-BY-NC-SA logo created by Lucas Ehlinger, https://www.flickr.com/photos/linxa/9059283431, CC-BY-NC-SA 2.0