Creative Commons

"CC icon", by Font Awesome, © Creative Commons, licenced under a CC BY 4.0 International licence.

What is Creative Commons?

Creative Commons (CC) is a non-profit organisation that aims to increase the amount of creative, cultural, educational, and scientific content freely available to the public to legally share, use, repurpose, and remix.

CC licenses offer a simple, standardised way for creators to permit users to reproduce, reuse, or remix a work. CC licences do not replace copyright, but work alongside it.

As an SCU author you are encouraged to apply a CC licence to your research outputs to enable others to copy, distribute and make use of your work/s as appropriate under the licence with proper attribution.

There are four different elements of CC licences which can be combined into six different licences.

The 4 elements and 6 CC licences

BY Attribution

The work can be copied, distributed, displayed, performed or remixed but the original creator must be attributed. This element is present in all CC licences.

SA Share Alike

The work can be copied, distributed, displayed, performed and modified. Adaptations of the work must be distributed under the same terms as the original.

NC Non-Commercial

The work can be copied, distributed, displayed, performed, and modified but only for non-commercial uses.

ND No Derivatives

The work can be copied, distributed, displayed, and performed only in it's original form.

License	License details	Explanation	Licence deed
^{CC BY}	Attribution	Materials with this licence can be copied, distributed, displayed, performed, or modified. The creator of the original work must be attributed.	View Licence Deed
^{CC BY-SA}	Attribution-Share Alike	Materials with this licence can be copied, distributed, displayed, performed and modified provided the modified version is shared under the same terms as the original.	View Licence Deed
^{CC BY-NC}	Attribution-Non-Commercial	Materials with this licence can be copied, distributed, displayed, performed, and modified for non-commercial purposes only.	View Licence Deed
^{CC BY-NC-SA}	Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike	Materials with this licence can be copied, distributed, displayed, performed, and modified for non-commercial purposes provided the modified version is shared under the same terms as the original.	View Licence Deed
^{CC BY-ND}	Attribution-No Derivatives	Materials with this licence can be copied, distributed, displayed, and performed only its original form.	View Licence Deed
^{CC BY-NC-ND}	Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives	Materials with this licence can be copied, distributed, displayed and performed only in its original form and for non-commercial purposes.	View Licence Deed

^{Information about the CC licences has been adapted from "Six licences for sharing your work", by Creative Commons, CC0 Public Domain Dedication.}

^{Creative Commons Licence Icons, by Creative Commons, are shared under a CC BY 4.0 International licence.}

Applying a CC licence to your work

The CC Licence Chooser tool is designed to help choose an appropriate licence. Otherwise, consider what rights are not necessary to retain and apply a licence that matches. State the relevant licence in the copyright notice or somewhere visible on the work. Providing a sample attribution is also useful to help others credit the work.

When publishing open access with a commercial publisher authors are offered a choice from a selection of CC licences. Carefully read the terms of each licence before choosing.

Choose a licence carefully, once it has been applied it cannot be revoked.

Finding Creative Commons material

There are many tools that curate CC licenced material.

Text resources (e.g. articles and books)

Find open access material (material that has been licenced with a CC licence) by searching the Library catalogue and selecting "Open Access" from the Availability filters.

The Library's collection and Library Guide are a good starting point when looking specifically for open educational resources or open textbooks.

Images

Find CC licenced images from search engines including:

OpenVerse
Flickr Creative Commons
Google Images (limit your search under Usage rights> Creative Commons licences)
Public Domain Images Archive.

The Library's Open Resources Guide also has a list of suggested resources.

Music

The following sites offer access to CC licensed music:

Creative Commons playlists on Free music archive
Soundcloud include the CC licence (e.g. CC BY) in the search box
Musopen filter to CC licensed music (free account is limited to five downloads per day)
dig CCmixter remixes shared with a CC licence
Silverman Sound offers music under CC licences, with the option to purchase a Pro licence for uses that go beyond the terms of the CC licence

Film and video

CC licensed film and/or video content can be found on:

Vimeo has a curated list of CC licensed videos organised by licence
YouTube, do a search and Filter by Features > Creative Commons.

Attributing CC licenced material

The TASL format can be used to attribute CC licensed material:

Title
Author
Source (provide a link to where the material can be found, this is usually achieved by hyperlinking the title of the material)
Licence (state the CC licence and provide a link to the licence deed)

A sample template for this format is:

[Title], by [Author] is licensed under [CC XX].

For example:

"The Choices", by Orin Zebest is licenced under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.

For adaptations, attribute the original work so others can see what was changed. A sample template for this format is:

This work [Title of adaptation], is adapted from [Title of original], by [original author], used under [CC licence of original]. [Title of adaptation], by [author of adaptation] is licensed under [CC licence applied to adaptation].

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