Scholarly Publishing

Library of the Health Sciences

How to put a creative commons license on your work

Licensing your work is a declarative act. To license your work with a creative commons license, simply place a statement somewhere on your work specifying what type of creative commons license it has, and link back to the Creative Commons.org website so that readers can view a copy of the license.

CC BY: “This license lets others distribute, remix, adapt, and build upon your work, even commercially, as long as they credit you for the original creation. This is the most accommodating of licenses offered. Recommended for maximum dissemination and use of licensed materials.”

a flowchart titled "Is copyright right for you" that depicts how values such as accessibility, credit, noncommercial use, and adaptation can influence which license you assign to your work

For more information about the licenses, contact your librarian, or see the CreativeCommons.org website page: “About the Licenses.”

An example of a CC-license statement:

©2020 by Studenta Studenty & Studento Studentino. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution International license (CC BY). To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

An example of a CC-license statement on a thesis:

screenshot of the title page of a thesis with a creative commons license statement at the bottom that includes the Creative Commons logo, and the statement that reads, after the author names, "this work is licensed under the creative commons attribution international license (CC BY) ', with a link to the license website

An example of a CC-license statement on a presentation slide:

screenshot of a powerpoint slide with a creative commons license statement, "except where otherwise noted, this work is licensed under the creative commons attribution-noncommercial-sharealike international license (CC-BY-NC-SA)"