Creative Commons

Creative Commons is a nonprofit organization that is dedicated to open access of information. The organization is made up of a global network of activists, legal experts and researchers that work to understand and solve copyright issues.  Creative Commons provides free copyright licenses that give scholars more control over how, where, and why their original work is being used.

Why use Creative Commons?

Dealing with copyright can be a time-consuming and complicated process. If scholars want to have less restrictive copyright rules on their work by publishers and want to control certain ways that their work can be used, Creative Commons licenses can help simplify the process.

On the Creative Commons webpage scholars can find information about the different Creative Commons copyright agreements and access small, copyright logos that indicate what type of restrictions if any apply to a work. They can also learn more about efforts to share information globally with other scientists and researchers.