Creative Commons licences

Creative Commons licences, or CC licences, do not replace copyright law. They specify, in a simple manner, the permissions granted by the author. They set the conditions and limits for the use of the work.

For example, an author uploads an image under the CC-BY-NC (Attribution, for non-commercial use) licence. Anyone wishing to reuse this image knows that they can modify it, that commercial use is forbidden and that the creator must be cited, without having to contact the creator to ask permission to use the image. By imposing the citation of the author’s name, the licence preserves the author’s moral rights.

The choice of a Creative Commons license is final. Thus, as the CoopIST website explains : « Une fois que vous avez attribué une licence Creative Commons à une œuvre, quiconque en prend connaissance peut s’en prévaloir pour réutiliser votre œuvre. Si vous décidez de changer de licence Creative Commons ou de cesser la diffusion de votre œuvre sous licence Creative Commons, cela ne s’appliquera pas aux exemplaires déjà en circulation, ni aux adaptations de votre œuvre déjà réalisées, qui pourront continuer à être diffusés et réutilisés aux conditions de la licence que vous aviez choisie ».

Creative Commons licences simplify the distribution and sharing of intellectual works. The Coopist website points out that, by using a Creative Commons licence on their work, authors can :

• to share their work and facilitate its use by others;
• authorise its reproduction and distribution free of charge under certain conditions;
• granting users rights in addition to the copyright that applies by default.

Making the work visible in open access databases

The HTML code generated by the licence selector is machine-readable, and therefore search engine friendly. It is also possible to add metadata: title of the work, url, format of the work, name of the author, etc. The Creative Commons site explains how its licences work:

The public copyright licences are designed in an innovative “three-layer” way. Each licence starts as a traditional legal tool, in the kind of language and text format that most lawyers use and enjoy. Creative Commons call it the Legal Code layer of each licence.

But since most creators, educators and researchers are not lawyers, Creative Commons also offer the licences in a format that is accessible to everyone – the Explanatory Summary, also known as the ‘human readable’ version. By summarising and explaining the main provisions and conditions of the licences, it is a practical reference for rights holders and users of works. Think of the Explanatory Summary as an easy-to-use interface below the Legal Code, although it is not a licence and its content is not part of the Legal Code.

The final layer of the licence recognises that software, from search engines to office software to music publishers, plays a huge role in the creation, copying, retrieval and dissemination of works. In order for the internet to identify a Creative Commons licensed work, they provide a “machine-readable” version of the licenses – a summary of permissions and obligations written in a language that software, search engines, and other types of technology can understand.

Plan S is an initiative to promote open access scientific publishing. Plan S calls for that “With effect from 2021, all scholarly publications on the results from research funded by public or private grants provided by national, regional and international research councils and funding bodies, must be published in Open Access Journals, on Open Access Platforms, or made immediately available through Open Access Repositories without embargo.”