Use of Creative Commons Licenses
The WAC Clearinghouse uses Creative Commons licenses for its publications. Authors and collection editors can choose among the licenses listed on the Creative Commons licenses description page. Developed by Lawrence Lessig and Eric Eldred in 2001 and released in 2002, Creative Commons licenses address the need for licenses that stand between copyright and public domain status.
Creative Commons licenses allow content creators to indicate whether their work can be used freely, adapted for use in other content, used with or without attribution, and used for commercial purposes. The Creative Commons website describes their licenses in the following way:
Creative Commons licenses give everyone from individual creators to large institutions a standardized way to grant the public permission to use their creative work under copyright law. From the reuser’s perspective, the presence of a Creative Commons license on a copyrighted work answers the question, What can I do with this work?
Creative Commons offers six licenses that work within copyright law. The licenses were originally developed to work within United States copyright law but have since been adapted (or ported) for use in more than 50 international jurisdictions. For more information, see the Creative Commons entry on Wikipedia.
Creative Commons Licenses on the WAC Clearinghouse
The Clearinghouse initially used contractual language similar to the intent of Creative Commons licenses. Its contracts for early books and its copyright statements in its first journal specified that copyright for works was retained by authors and that authors granted the Clearinghouse the right to present the works as originally written and without restriction. Shortly after the release of the more robust and flexible Creative Commons licensing framework, the Clearinghouse adopted Creative Commons licensing and retroactively applied those licenses to its earlier published work. Below, we define the rights that are at the center of Creative Commons licenses, provide brief overviews of the six main (and one related) licenses, and explain our recommendation for using those licenses on work published by the Clearinghouse.
Creative Commons License Rights
Creative Commons licenses grant four basic rights, as shown below:
Attribution (BY): Determines whether anyone using, distributing, or creating a derivative work must give the author or licensor credit for the work.
Share Alike (SA): Requires that derivative works may be distributed under a Creative Commons license that is identical to the license that governs the original work. In other words, derivative works cannot carry a more restrictive license than the original work.
Non-commercial (NC): Excludes use of the work and any derivative works for commercial purposes.
No Derivative Works (ND): Does not allow the creation of derivative works.
Creative Commons Licenses Defined
Creative Commons offers six licenses, each consisting of a combination of the rights described above. It also offers a generic public domain dedication. Creative Commons describes the licenses and public domain dedication as follows:
CC BY: This license allows reusers to distribute, remix, adapt, and build upon the material in any medium or format, so long as attribution is given to the creator. The license allows for commercial use.
CC BY-SA: This license enables reusers to distribute, remix, adapt, and build upon the material in any medium or format, so long as attribution is given to the creator. The license allows for commercial use. If you remix, adapt, or build upon the material, you must license the modified material under identical terms.
CC BY-NC: This license enables reusers to distribute, remix, adapt, and build upon the material in any medium or format for noncommercial purposes only, and only so long as attribution is given to the creator.
CC BY-NC-SA: This license enables reusers to distribute, remix, adapt, and build upon the material in any medium or format for noncommercial purposes only, and only so long as attribution is given to the creator. If you remix, adapt, or build upon the material, you must license the modified material under identical terms.
CC BY-ND: This license enables others to copy and distribute the material in any medium or format in unadapted form only, and only so long as attribution is given to the creator. The license allows for commercial use.
CC BY-NC-ND: This license enables reusers to copy and distribute the material in any medium or format in unadapted form only, for noncommercial purposes only, and only so long as attribution is given to the creator.
CC0: CC0 (aka CC Zero) is a public dedication tool, which enables creators to give up their copyright and put their works into the worldwide public domain. CC0 enables reusers to distribute, remix, adapt, and build upon the material in any medium or format, with no conditions.
Creative Commons provides access to a CC license chooser that allows you to determine which license best fits your needs and goals.
Recommended Creative Commons License for Work Published by the Clearinghouse
Because journal articles, books, and book chapters constitute a key form of intellectual capital for scholars whose work is considered in annual, promotion, and tenure reviews, the Clearinghouse has chosen the most restrictive Creative Commons license as its default license—the Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License. Authors and editors of works published on the Clearinghouse may instead choose other Creative Commons licenses to govern use of their work.
Questions about Translations of Work Published by the Clearinghouse
Several books that were originally published in English have been translated into other languages. We appreciate the work of the translators who have made it possible to read our work in other languages and we welcome inquiries regarding translation.
If you are interested in translating work published on the Clearinghouse and having that work appear alongside the original work, please contact Michael Pemberton (for journal articles) or Ann Blakeslee (for books). If you would like to translate a work and publish it on another website, please contact the copyright holder for permission. For journal articles, this is typically the author of the article; please check the copyright statement for each article. For authored books, the rights holder is typically the author. For chapters in edited collections, please contact the author(s) of the chapter.
Please note that some books available on the Clearinghouse are republications and, in some cases, the rights are held by their original publishers. Please check the copyright statement on each book page.
Learn More
Several sites provide additional information about Creative Commons licensing.