Creative Commons

This is a guide to the open licensing system Creative Commons. Open licensing is a vital component of open science, and Creative Commons licenses are commonly used in Open access scholarly publishing.

As a university researcher in Sweden, you hold the copyright to your research output and can choose how others may use and re-use your publications by applying a CC license. Today, almost 90% of refereed publications by Malmö University authors are published Open access, and therefore you will have to know which license to choose and how to apply it. 

By publishing Open access, and licencing your output with a CC license you are a part of a global initative striving towards open science. Equal and fair access to knowledge is a vital part of UNESCO's recommendation on Open Science. 

UNESCO recommendation on Open Science

Open scientific knowledgerefers to open access to scientific publications, research data, metadata, open educational resources, software, and source code and hardware that are available in the public domain or under copyright and licensed under an open licence that allows access, re-use, repurpose, adaptation and distribution under specific conditions, provided to all actors immediately or as quickly as possible regardless of location, nationality, race, age, gender, income, socio-economic circumstances, career stage, discipline, language, religion, disability, ethnicity or migratory status or any other grounds, and free of charge. It also refers to the possibility of opening research methodologies and evaluation processes.

Quote and picture: “UNESCO Recommendation on Open Science”, p. 9-11, by UNESCO, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO