What is Creative Commons?

Creative Commons is a US "nonprofit organization that helps overcome legal obstacles to the sharing of knowledge and creativity to address the world’s most pressing challenges." Accessed 02.06.2023

Creative Commons licensing allows creators to retain their copyright and choose how others can legally copy, share and build upon their work. Creators have more freedom of choice with a variety of licensing options that allow some rights to be reserved and others to be waived, unlike copyrighted works with 'All Rights reserved'. Click here to watch a fun animated video which explains the CC licences, called Creative Commons Kiwi by Creative Commons Aotearoa New Zealand. See the Creative Commons Licences tab to discover the different licences and how to reuse them.

The choice of options is transparent enabling the user to decide whether the CC licenced work fits their purpose. Creative Commons Licencing creates a culture of sharing: resources can be shared and reused, encouraging and fostering new ideas.  See the infographic below to help you discover the right creative commons licence for your purpose.

Creative Commons (CC) licences are widely used, for example:

• all content on Wikipedia is CC Licenced
• many photographs (including the photograph above) on Flickr are CC licenced
• Funding organisations such as Wellcome Trust and UKRI have endorsed cOAlition S Plan S (Shock) Principles. This means that grantees in receipt of funding must apply a CC licence to their author accepted manuscript (usually CC BY) to make it open access without any embargos
• e-theses on UDORA are open access and licenced under a CC licence

CC licenced material must be referenced or attributed (unless the creator has waived all rights to the work including attribution by using a CC0 public domain dedication tool).

Please note that Creative Commons licences are irrevocable: i.e., once a Creative Commons licence has been assigned to a work, it cannot be revoked in the future. This is so that people who re-use the work can be assured that their right to have done this cannot be taken away. See below for how to apply a Creative Commons licence to your work. 

Current version of the Creative Commons licence

There have been five different versions of the Creative Commons suite of licences since 2002. Version 4.0 is the most current and was released in 2013.

The key differences between v4.0 and earlier versions such as v3.0 are:

• Version 4.0 corrects a previous oversight in the older versions and gives the licensee 30 days upon discovering a breach to correct any licence violations caused by failing to comply with the terms and conditions, for example by not including the required attribution.
• In version 4.0 titles are not required for proper attribution. This was a requirement in earlier versions. Users are encouraged to use titles if supplied but this change recognises that not all works have titles.
• Version 4.0 licensees are required to indicate if they have made any modifications to the licensed material. For example you must state if you have used an excerpt of any work. This applies regardless of whether those adaptations created any modified material. In version 3.0 the obligation to indicate any modifications only applied if it resulted in the creation of an adaptation.
• Version 4.0 expands upon the previous provision in version 3.0 for the licensor to request that the licensee remove the attribution from an adaptation to also include verbatim reproductions of the work too.
• Version 3.0 and earlier licences offered 'ported' versions of their international CC licences for many jurisdictions, these included adaptations to reflect local language, legal processes and protocols. Version 4.0 is an international licence and is jurisdiction-neutral to enable its use to be internationally valid. Particularly useful with global research projects and organisations. 

For more information on the changes between the licence versions please see https://wiki.creativecommons.org/wiki/License%20Versions