An introduction to open access licensing

Our open access content is published under the terms of a Creative Commons licence. Instead of transferring rights to us, authors and editors give us permission to publish their work under their chosen Creative Commons licence, which in turn grants users the right to reuse the work under the terms of that licence.

Here are the most common licences:

• CC BY allows others to redistribute, remix, adapt and build upon your work in any medium or format, even commercially, as long as they credit you as the creator of the work.
• CC BY-SA (Share Alike) allows the same as CC BY, but also states that any new content generated using your work must be licensed under the same terms as the original content.
• CC BY-ND (No Derivatives) restricts adaptations to your work. It allows others to redistribute your content, even commercially, as long as you’re credited, but the material cannot be distributed if it’s been modified.
• CC BY-NC (Non-Commercial) allows the same reuse as CC BY, but not for commercial purposes. Anyone interested in publishing the work commercially may still request permission directly from you, the creator of the work. 
• CC BY-NC-SA (Non-Commercial-Share Alike) combines the CC BY-NC and CC BY-SA licences.
• CC BY-NC-ND (Non-Commercial-No Derivatives) combines the CC BY-NC and CC BY-ND licences.

We recommend CC BY-NC for all book publications, but we’re happy to discuss other licences on a case-by-case basis.