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Copyright Resources

Guide to copyright for the UMass Chan community including author rights, reusing material for teaching and research, and Creative Commons licenses.

What is Creative Commons?

Creative Commons is an international not-for-profit organization that seeks to facilitate knowledge sharing and creative innovation in an equitable way through the provision of free, standardized legal tools. 

A Creative Commons license is a tool that allows copyright holders to indicate how others may reuse their content and informs the public about how a work can be used. Creative Commons licenses are not a statement of copyright ownership, but a statement of how the copyright owner would like their materials to be used. 

There are 6 basic types of Creative Commons licenses:

  1. Attribution  (The most accommodating. User may distribute, remix, tweak, build upon—even for commercial purposes)
  2. Attribution—Share Alike  (Very similar to #1, but any derivatives must allow the  same uses as the original work)
  3. Attribution—NoDerivs  (User must pass along the original work in whole and unchanged)
  4. Attribution—NonCommercial  (Very similar to # 1, but for non-commercial purposes only)
  5. Attribution—NonCommercial—Share Alike  (Combination of # 2 and # 4)
  6. Attribution—NonCommercial—NoDerivs  (The most restrictive.  Combination of # 3 and # 4.)

CC License Tree

Creative commons licenses table. Public domain all permissions granted and do not need to attribute. BY attribution license requires attribution but can do anything with the material. BY-SA attribution share alike license requires attribution and material be shared with the same license. BY-ND attribution no derivatives license requires attribution and does not allow modifying or adapting the material. BY NC attribution non-commercial license requires attribution and does not permit commercial use. BY-NC-SA attribution non-commercial share alike license requires attribution, does not permit commercial use, and the same license must be applied to derivative works. BY-NC-ND attribution non-commercial no derivatives license requires attribution, does not permit commercial use, and does not permit modifying or adapting the material.

How to find CC licensed works

Citing Creative Commons Works

All current CC licenses require that you attribute the original author(s) AND the specific CC license that applies. An attribution should include: 

  • the title of the work
  • the author of the work
  • the link to the source (the work's URL)
  • the license it is made available under

For example: 

Beagle dog next to pond
"Beagle Dog Mayesbrook Park 16th March 2018" by Alan Shearman is licensed under CC-BY- 2.0

See more from Creative Commons Best Practices for Attribution wiki page.