Creative Commons Licensing for Books and Articles

“Copyright” refers to the right of a creator to ownership of any tangible work they have created—whether it be images, recordings, compositions, software, or writing—which can be reproduced, displayed, or shared.

In most cases, if someone creates an original work in a fixed (a reproducible and non-temporary) medium, then that creator is automatically entitled to copyrighted ownership of their creation. A fixed medium work can be digital or physical: audio, image, and video files made with a phone or computer and hosted online are protected as well as paintings, sculptures, or analogue recordings. If someone creates material on behalf of another party, such as a company, a nonprofit, or another organisation, then copyright ownership may extend to the third party as a “work made for hire”.

While copyright is assumed to go to the creator automatically, many commercial works are officially registered at copyright offices to ensure authorship is officially documented in the event of any legal disputes.

Only a copyright owner is entitled to reproduce, distribute, or profit off of an original, fixed work. Copyright holders are also entitled to give permission to others to exercise these same rights.

Open Access (OA) and Licensing

Open Access (OA) publishing is not opposed to authors maintaining copyright over their works, nor is it the same as public domain. OA is foremost about ensuring that published material is permanently available to readers at no cost.

Open Access does not prohibit authors from having rights to their work, but OA does encourage work to be freely available, distributable, and printable. Because of this, it helps to ensure that some of the copyright permissions that are normally exclusive to the authors are explicitly waived and available for all. For instance: the right to freely share an OA article, book, or book chapter on another website, the right to print and use Open Access work for educational purposes, and the right to use figures in other publishable works with attribution.

To ensure that these exceptions are explicit, many OA publishers—including ]u[ Ubiquity —utilise Creative Commons Licensing, which allows for authors and publishers to make certain rights available to re-users without completely releasing a work into the public domain.

Creative Commons Licensing

Creative Commons Licences (commonly called CC licences) are a set of six different licences that work within copyright law. These licences allow creators to set specific allowances on what re-users can fairly do with the work without needing to ask for explicit permission.

All of the CC licences require that re-users of any licensed work provide attribution to the original creators. However, some CC licences may ban re-users from profiting off of the work, while others may allow for it to be used in commercial projects. Some CC Licences demand that any re-use of the material (including adaptations, re-mixes, and expansions of the material) must also be released under the same licence.

The Six Creative Commons Licences

Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY): The material can be distributed, re-used, re-mixed, or adapted in any way, including for commercial purposes, so long as the original creator is properly attributed.
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike (CC BY-SA): The material can be distributed, re-used, re-mixed, or adapted in any way, including for commercial purposes, so long as any new or expanded material is also released under a CC BY-SA licence. The original creator must also be properly attributed.
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial CC BY-NC: The material can be distributed, re-used, re-mixed, or adapted for non-commercial purposes only, so long as the original creator is properly attributed.
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Sharealike (CC BY-NC-SA): The material can be distributed, re-used, re-mixed, or adapted for non-commercial purposes only, and any new or expanded material must also be released under a CC BY-NC-SA licence. The original creator must be properly attributed.
Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives (CC BY-ND): The material can be distributed or copied in any medium or format in unadapted form only, with attribution to the original creator. This may be done for commercial purposes.
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-NoDerivatives (CC BY-NC-ND): The material can be distributed or copied in any medium or format in unadapted form only, with attribution to the original creator. This may only be done for non-commercial purposes.

Journals and Creative Commons Licensing

When scholarly material is published as Open Access, there’s no cost to allow articles to be shared when they are properly attributed.

Ensuring that material is shared not only values the commitments of OA—ensuring that scholarly material is publicly accessible and usable by all—but increases the likelihood that journals and presses will receive more attention for their output.

All ]u[ Ubiquity Press contracts state that books and journals must be published under a CC-BY 4.0 licence by default. However, Partner Presses may use an alternative Creative Commons License as requested by authors for their books and journals, although we strongly suggest that these presses also make use of the CC-BY 4.0 licence.

Note, however, that if material was previously published under standard ‘All Rights Reserved’ copyright, then the previously published material does not automatically update to Creative Commons licensing even if the journal is Open Access. The press manager, editor or other relevant party will have to obtain explicit permission from all authors to update any material previously published under standard Copyright protections to a Creative Commons licence.

DO:

State what CC licence authors must agree to publish with the journal on their Submissions pages, and ensure that this agreement links to a clear, human-readable explanation of the terms of the licence, such as those found on the Creative Commons website.
Require that authors explicitly agree to the terms of the journal’s CC licence policies on the author checklist when they submit their articles.
Check the CC licence terms that articles were published under if accusations of improper redistribution or re-use of a published article are brought to the journal’s attention. See if there are any violations of the Creative Commons licence that the author(s) published under, including issues of attribution, rules for commercial use, and rules for adapting or adjusting the material.
If a journal originally published material under a standard All-Rights Reserved copyright statement, be sure to acquire explicit permission from the authors before updating any of this material to a Creative Commons Licence.
If work is being published under a Creative Commons Licence other than the default CC BY, per an author request, make sure that you change the licence accordingly on the article’s Publication tab under “Permissions & Disclosure” prior to publishing the article.
- Or, if using ]u[ Ubiquity Press’s typesetting services, make sure to include a typesetting comment to note that the License is different from the default.
Where relevant, please ensure that book authors are made aware of the licence required, and that they are a clear, human-readable explanation of the terms of the licence, such as those found on the Creative Commons website.

Resources:

What is Open Access? -

What is Open Access? | Open Access

What is Copyright? (US) -

What is Copyright? | U.S. Copyright Office

P-01: UK Copyright Law fact sheet :: The UK Copyright Service

Publishing Under the UKRI Open Access Policy -

Publishing under the UKRI open access policy: copyright and Creative Commons licences - Jisc