How do I know if a Creative Commons license has been applied to a work? How do I know which one has been applied?
If a CC license has been applied to a work, you will see a CC button, which indicates not only whether a CC license has been used, but also what kind. For example, the CC BY icon indicates fair use by attribution. This means you are free to remix and distribute the work as you please, as long as the creator is acknowledged. When you know what kind of CC license a work has, you will know how are allowed to use it.How do I find Creative Commons licensed content to reuse or adapt?
Visit the Leddy Library’s Find Creative Commons Content guide and/or Finding Open Content guide for assistance!How do I attribute a Creative Commons licensed work I have reused and/or adapted?
To properly attribute a Creative Commons licensed work that you have re-used or adapted, it is best to follow the TASL Framework:Title- What is the name of the work?
Author- Who allows you to use the work?
In most cases, the author of the work is also the licensor. However, in some cases, the author may want you to attribute the work to another entity, like an organization. Either way, it is best to do what the licensor requests (Recommended practices for attribution, n.d.).
Source- Where can people find the work?
Be sure to provide a URL or hyperlink to the original work so that others can access it. If you found the work somewhere other than the original site, provide information about the original site where the work was located (Recommended practices for attribution, n.d.).
License- How can you use the work?
Include which CC license the work you used falls under. It is best to name and provide a hyperlink to the license ex. CC BY 4.0
Here is an example of proper attribution of a work with a CC license:
Autumn Leaves by Jamie Lee, available at ArtShare, licensed under CC BY 4.0
Source: Recommended practices for attribution, n.d.
https://wiki.creativecommons.org/wiki/Recommended_practices_for_attribution
How do I apply a Creative Commons license to my own work?
To decide which CC license you should apply to your work, you can use the Creative Commons License Chooser on the Creative Commons website. By taking a short quiz, the License Chooser will select which CC license is best for your work. After selecting your license, ensure there is a hyperlink to the correct Creative Commons License deed somewhere clearly visible on you. Some systems - such as repositories or book publishing platforms - may have metadata fields for you to enter this information in. Below is an example of proper attribution:"Creative Commons 10th Birthday Celebration San Francisco" by Timothy Vollmer is licensed under CC BY 4.0 (Recommended practices for attribution, n.d.)
Additionally, you can insert the corresponding logo of your CC license to your work:
Logos Available to Download: https://creativecommons.org/mission/downloads/
NOTE: You may not always be able to choose your Creative Commons license. In the case of a gold or diamond Open Access journal article, for example, the journal will oftentimes have decided on a license that every article in that journal is published under.
If I put a Creative Commons license on my work, am I giving away my copyright?
No. Putting a Creative Commons license on your work does not mean you are giving away copyright. Rather, it means you are permitting the use of your work under specified conditions while retaining copyright over the original work. The type of CC license will determine how your work can be used.How does Creative Commons differ from Fair Dealing?
Fair Dealing is an exception in the Canadian Copyright Act that allows the use of a copyrighted work under specific circumstances. Unlike Creative Commons licensed works, materials used under the Fair Dealing exception are not Open Access. Please visit the Library's Fair Dealing page for more information.I am concerned that my Creative Commons licensed work will be used to train AI. What can I do about this?
Creative Commons licensed works can be used to train AI as long as the conditions of the license are met. Creative Commons is looking to add Preference Signals to licenses, which would allow creators to indicate the terms by which their work can or cannot be used for training AI. This area is changing rapidly, so please continually refer to Creative Commons on this matter.It should be noted that publishing via a traditional subscription model does not protect your work from being used to train AI, as evidenced by Taylor & Francis’ $10M partnership with Microsoft.
Janet Salmons’ guest post for the The Scholarly Kitchen, “Supply Chain of Writing Fools”, is an interesting read on this topic.
Please visit the Library's Generative AI & Copyright page for more information.
I am a journal editor, and I am wondering what license we should distribute our publications under. How do I decide?
Please get in touch with us at scholarship@uwindsor.ca if you’d like any assistance in this area! If you are setting up a new journal, we will prompt you to think about this and provide some points of consideration for you as you decide.The Creative Commons License Chooser is also a great tool for helping you decide on your license.
Are Creative Commons licenses the only type of open licenses?
No, Creative Commons licenses are not the only type of open licenses. There are other categories of licenses, which are suited to specific works and contexts. A non-exhaustive list includes:- Open Source Software Licenses: These licenses comply with the Open Source Definition, which means they allow software to be freely used, modified, and shared.
- Public Domain Tools: These tools, also provided by Creative Commons, allow the creator to dedicate their work to the public domain (Creative Commons Licenses: Public Domain Tools, n.d.). This means the creator waives any copyright claims over the work.
- Open Data Licenses: Like CC licenses, Open Data Licenses allow you to control how your datasets are used and redistributed.
- CanLII User License: The Canadian Legal Information Institute (CanLII), is a non-profit organization with the goal of making Canadian laws and legal decision free and accessible online. See the "Reproduction and Copyright" section of the Terms of Use page for permitted appropriate uses, as well as the "Prohibited Uses" section for limitations.
Source: What is CanLII | CanLII
Terms of Use | CanLII
To learn more about legal information research, please contact the Don & Gail Rodzik Law Library.
- Traditional Knowledge Labels: These labels allow Indigenous communities to determine how their traditional knowledge is used and redistributed. Labels are divided into three groups:
Provenance Labels: These labels specify the group or sub-group who is the primary authority of the material.
Protocol Labels: These labels specify the traditional protocols associated with access to the information and ask that viewers respect the community protocol.
Permission Labels: These labels indicate which activities are permissible with regard to the traditional knowledge. For example, some traditional knowledge may be open to commercialization (TK Open to Commercialization, or TK OC), and some may not (TK Non-Commercial, or TK NC).
Source: https://localcontexts.org/labels/traditional-knowledge-labels/
- The University of Manitoba Library’s Guide includes more examples (scroll to “Other open licenses” heading).
What are some examples of Creative Commons licenses being used at UWindsor?
- All of the journals hosted on the University of Windsor’s Open Journal Systems instance share their content under one of the Creative Commons licenses. Please browse the platform and click into an individual journal to discover which one it uses.
- Books published on the University of Windsor’s Open Monograph Press instance are likewise published under a Creative Commons license.
- Many works distributed under a Creative Commons license, including theses and dissertations at the University, can be found in our institutional repository, Scholarship @ UWindsor.
Who can I ask to learn more about Creative Commons licenses?
Please get in touch with us at one of the following addresses!- For questions about copyright and Creative Commons: copyright@uwindsor.ca
- For questions about scholarly publishing and Creative Commons, and/or creating open educational resources: scholarship@uwindsor.ca
- For questions about using Open Educational Resources and other openly licensed materials in teaching and instruction: libraryinstruction@uwindsor.ca
Content on this page is shared under the following license:
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