As copyright law and open sharing of information have been major topics of discussion among the academic community, many authors do not know how or if they can share their work freely and how copyright law may restrict the resharing of research. There is often confusion and conflicting measures when it comes to copyright and where/when an author can share their work. By publishing work under open access, the potential for increased citation rates and indexing potential become possible through the various Creative Commons licensing options.
Creative Commons licensing, which is often tied to open research and specifically the open access movement, is a systematic way of allowing creators to keep and manage their copyright on terms they choose. Creators can grant permission to everyone in the world to freely utilize their work in different ways. This gives freedom to researchers worldwide to post, share, and expand upon original publications. This has become a very important part of the open access movement, ensuring that work can be distributed and accessed without any paywalls or restrictions.
Creative Commons licenses are made up of four conditions that can be mixed and matched to create six different license combinations, each with varying levels of permissiveness. A wonderful resource to utilize is the Creative Commons website, specifically, their page that outlines the
different parts of a Creative Commons license.
Types of Creative Commons (CC) Licenses:
CC BY: Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
Most PermissiveNote: IGI Global publishes under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
- Permitted:
- Public is allowed to share, redistribute author’s original work to any platform of their choice.
- Public is permitted to change, alter, build upon the author’s original work.
- Commercial & Non-Commercial
- Licensing Terms
- Appropriate credit must be afforded, a link to the license must be provided, and any changes made to the work must be addressed.
- With IGI Global, authors can:
- Post their full final typeset PDF of their chapter or article on their personal website and/or their university repository site.
- Post their article or chapter on general open access sites for free download and distribution, such as ResearchGate, arXiv, Academia.edu, SSRN, or society-sponsored sites.
- Use their work in a coursepack without having to secure the consent of IGI Global.
- Give their work to a commercial third party to post, copy, distribute, sell or give for free or for any monetary consideration.
- Republish their chapter or article in a future book or journal publication.
- Have their work be widely accessible to the research community at large and the copyright stays with them.
It is encouraged that when authors share their article or chapter, that they are sure to link back to the published version on IGI Global’s website.
IGI Global authors are requested to sign an author’s warranty, ensuring that the materials being submitted are original and unpublished elsewhere. Also, IGI Global has first publication rights, no books or journals will publish previously published work.
CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0)
- Permitted:
- Public is allowed to share, redistribute author’s original work to any platform of their choice.
- Public is permitted to change, alter, build upon the author’s original work.
- Commercial & Non-Commercial
- Licensing Terms
- Appropriate credit must be afforded, a link to the license must be provided, and any changes made to the work must be addressed.
- If any alterations were made, the re-user must distribute their altered work under the same license as the original.
CC BY-NC: Attribution-Noncommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)
- Permitted:
- Public is allowed to share, redistribute author’s original work to any platform of their choice.
- Public is permitted to change, alter, build upon the author’s original work.
- Licensing Terms
- Noncommercial
- Appropriate credit must be afforded, a link to the license must be provided, and any changes made to the work must be addressed.
CC BY-NC-SA: Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)
- Permitted:
- Public is allowed to share, redistribute author’s original work to any platform of their choice.
- Public is permitted to change, alter, build upon the author’s original work.
- Licensing Terms
- Appropriate credit must be afforded, a link to the license must be provided, and any changes made to the work must be addressed.
- Noncommercial
- If any alterations were made, the re-user must distribute their altered work under the same license as the original.
CC BY-ND: Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-ND 4.0)
- Permitted:
- Public is allowed to share, redistribute author’s original work to any platform of their choice.
- Licensing Terms
- Appropriate credit must be afforded and a link to the license must be provided.
- You may not distribute the work if any alterations were made.
- Commercial
CC BY-NC-ND: Attribution-Noncommercial-NoDerivaties 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)
Least Permissive- Permitted:
- Public is allowed to share, redistribute author’s original work to any platform of their choice.
- Licensing Terms
- Noncommercial
- Appropriate credit must be afforded, a link to the license must be provided, and any changes made to the work must be addressed.
- You may not distribute the work if any alterations were made.
How To Publish Under a Creative Commons License
To secure a Creative Commons license for one’s work, it is strongly recommended to explore open access publishing channels. As open access publications will always offer one or more of the Creative Commons licensing options. There will in most cases, unless the publication receives full open access funding, be an open access processing charge requested to be paid. The open access processing charge includes a number of service provisions including the publication of the work under a Creative Commons license since the publisher will not hold copyright and therefore not be able to secure any revenue for the published work that would typically cover the publisher’s overhead costs in producing the work.
If You Do Not Publish Under Open Access with Creative Commons Licensing What Rights Do you Have?
It is important to understand how work being published under Creative Commons licensing differs from publications that are published under standard access where the copyright for the work is held by the publisher.
For subscription-based or standard access (non-open access) publications, which are traditionally held under copyright law, authors and editors will sign an Author's Warranty and Transfer of Copyright Agreement. This agreement transfers the copyright to the publisher, meaning that the publisher has full rights to the publication’s verbatim text (however, copyright protects the expression of an idea, but not the idea itself – so not the intellectual property – ideas, principles, concepts, etc.). Copyright laws vary from country to country and a publisher such as IGI Global based in the United States of America adheres to U.S. Copyright Law.
Copyright infringement essentially means using some or all of a copyrighted work without the original creator’s permission, or without an exception that allows one to use such work. However, when work is published under a Creative Commons license, most often (depending on the license) there is no need for securing such permission and so long as the work is being properly attributed, it is fine to utilize.
Understanding that copyright restriction can narrow an author’s ability to share their work, many publishers do offer Fair Use Policies that ensure some level of flexibility for authors. For instance,
IGI Global’s Fair Use Policy does allow copyrighted work to be deposited in some places such as institutional repositories, so long as they are not open access repositories.
IGI Global’s Fair Use Policy for Subscription-Based (Standard Access) Publications:
For Subscription-Based (Standard Access) Publications
Although all authors and editors of IGI Global sign an Author's Warranty and Transfer of Copyright Agreement, IGI Global supports a Fair Use Policy allowing authors and editors to:
- IGI GLOBAL AUTHORS, UNDER FAIR USE CAN:
- Post the final typeset PDF (which includes the title page, table of contents and other front materials, and the copyright statement) of their chapter or article (NOT THE ENTIRE BOOK OR JOURNAL ISSUE), on the author or editor's secure personal website and/or their university repository site.
- Green Open Access: IGI Global fully complies with the open access requirements of UKRI, Wellcome, and NIHR. Where required by their funder, authors retain the right to distribute their author accepted manuscript (AAM), such as via an institutional and/or subject repository (e.g. Europe PMC), under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) license for release no later than the date of first online publication.
- IGI GLOBAL AUTHORS, AS PER THE AUTHOR’S WARRANTY AND TRANSFER OF COPYRIGHT CANNOT:
- Post the article, chapter, full book publication, or journal issue on general open access sites for free download and distribution, such as ResearchGate, arXiv, Academia.edu, SSRN, or society-sponsored sites.
- Use in a coursepack without first securing the consent of IGI Global.
- Copy or distribute for any monetary consideration.
- Be given to a commercial third party to post, copy, distribute, sell or give for free or for any monetary consideration.
For those authors and editors wishing to republish their chapter or article in a future book or journal publication they are authoring or editing, they will need to seek written permission from IGI Global.
IGI Global abides by international copyright law, and as such all contributors are asked to sign an IGI Global Author's Warranty and Transfer of Copyright agreement prior to publication. The warranty portion ensures that materials submitted to IGI Global for consideration are original and have not been published elsewhere previously. The copyright portion clearly states: Author(s) cannot post the contents of the article/chapter on any website (with the exception of the author's secure personal website and/or their university repository site) or distribute the work to others in either electronic or print forms without the written permission of IGI Global. This includes any article or chapter currently under consideration by IGI Global and the final published work.
What If Your Work is Held Under Copyright by the Publisher and You Want to Convert It to Creative Commons Licensing?
Many publishers offer programs that provide authors the opportunity to convert their work previously published under standard access and held under copyright by the publisher to open access under Creative Commons licensing so that they can have the copyright transferred back to them and have more freedom to share their work.
About IGI Global
Founded in 1988 and headquartered in Hershey, Pennsylvania, USA with a subsidiary office (IGI Science and Technology, Ltd.) operating out of Beijing, China, IGI Global is a leading medium-sized independent international academic publisher of scholarly reference sources. They are committed to facilitating the discovery of pioneering scientific research that enhances and expands the body of knowledge available to the research community through traditional and open access publishing workflows. Working in close collaboration with more than 150,000+ expert researchers and professionals from leading institutions, IGI Global publishes quality peer-reviewed content across 350+ topics in 11 core subject areas, including business, computer science, education, engineering, healthcare, social sciences, and more. Learn more about IGI Global here.
Newsroom Contact
Emma Baronak
(717) 533-8845 ext. 183
ebaronak@igi-global.com
www.igi-global.com