Skip to Main Content
We are working to upgrade the research experience by making ongoing improvements to our Research Guides.
You may encounter changes in the look and feel of the Research Guides website along with structural changes to our existing guides. If you have any questions or concerns about this process please let us know.

Creative Commons

Licensing Conditions

  Attribution (BY):  Users of works with this license must give credit or attribution (CC-BY).           
  ShareAlike (SA):  Users must allow sharing a work with this license as a condition of its reuse.
  NonCommercial (NC):  The work can be reused for noncommercial, not-for-profit purposes.
  NoDerivatives (ND):  New versions or derivatives of the work cannot be created.
 
Image credit: Licensing types, by Creative Commons. https://creativecommons.org/share-your-work/licensing-types-examples/   Permission by CC-BY-4.0.

License Types

Creative Commons licenses allow you to reuse an image or other creative work by following the guidelines for the specific licensed image.  They are licensed in 6 different ways by their creator. These licenses are listed in order of broadest to most restrictive use.  Note how the licensing conditions have been combined.

CC BY Attribution (CC BY)   

CC BY  Attribution-ShareAlike (CC BY-SA )

CC BY-ND  Attribution-NoDerivatives (CC BY-ND)  

CC BY-NCAttribution-NonCommercial (CC BY-NC)

 Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike (CC BY-NC-SA)

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives (CC BY-NC-ND)

The following licenses are labels for works that are free of copyright:

Public Domain Mark (CC0) 

Free Cultural Works    

Image credits:  Licenses and examples, by Creative Commons.  https://creativecommons.org/about/cclicenses/  Permission by CC BY 4.0.

Licensing Spectrum

What types of CC licenses can be shared, remixed, and used for commercial uses?  Which licenses tend to be more open or have more restrictions?

Spectrum of Creative Commons Licenses

Image credit: Creative Commons License Spectrum by Shaddim. Permission by CC BY.

Last updated on Aug 7, 2024 2:42 PM