Skip to Main Content

OA / OER Toolkit: Creative Commons

The Creative Commons licensing system is a simple, standardized way for creators to grant copyright permissions to their works.

Licenses offered by Creative Commons

  Attribution CC BY     This license lets others distribute, remix, tweak, and build upon your work, even commercially, as long as they credit you for the original creation.   View License Deed | View Legal Code

 

    Attribution-ShareAlike      CC BY-SA     This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon your work even for commercial purposes, as long as they credit you and license their new creations under the identical terms.  View License Deed | View Legal Code

 

  Attribution-NoDerivs     CC BY-ND     This license allows for redistribution, commercial and non-commercial, as long as it is passed along unchanged and in whole, with credit to you.  View License Deed | View Legal Code

 

  Attribution-NonCommercial   CC BY-NC    This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon your work non-commercially, and although their new works must also acknowledge you and be non-commercial, they don’t have to license their derivative works on the same terms.  View License Deed | View Legal Code

 

  Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike  CC BY-NC-SA    This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon your work non-commercially, as long as they credit you and license their new creations under the identical terms.  View License Deed | View Legal Code

 

  Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs   CC BY-NC-ND    This license is the most restrictive of our six main licenses, only allowing others to download your works and share them with others as long as they credit you, but they can’t change them in any way or use them commercially.   View License Deed | View Legal Code

 

Creative Commons also provide tools that work in the “all rights granted” space of the public domain. The CC0 tool allows licensors to waive all rights and place a work in the public domain, and the Public Domain Mark allows any web user to “mark” a work as being in the public domain.

 

The content in this box is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Icons by The Noun Project.

Looking for content you can use?

Search the Commons for content you can share, use and re-mix.  

 

Here's how to give attribution  for other people's work.

e.g. A photographer chose to place the photo below in the public domain with a CC0 license. But we can acknowledge him, and share his license choice as follows:

Photo by Aurélien Bellanger is licensed under CC0 1.0.

Photo of a wooden shed on the end of a pier, at night, over calm water.

Overview of Creative Commons

Wanna Work Together? by Creative Commons is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution(CC BY) license.