Creative Commons license

A Creative Commons (CC) license is one of several public copyright licenses that enable the free distribution of an otherwise copyrighted “work”.

A CC license is used when an author wants to give other people the right to share, use, and build upon a work that they (the author) have created. CC provides an author flexibility (for example, they might choose to allow only non-commercial uses of a given work) and protects the people who use or redistribute an author's work from concerns of copyright infringement as long as they abide by the conditions that are specified in the license by which the author distributes the work.

Two of the most common licenses are CC-BY-NC and CC-BY. The difference between these is in the rights made available to readers. Under the CC-BY-NC license readers can read, share, and adapt the article but cannot use the material for commercial purposes, as long as they adhere to the guidelines around use and attribution