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Creative Commons Licensing

This guide is a basic primer to Creative Commons Licensing.

CC for Creators

This page contains:

  • Information on how to apply the Creative Commons (CC) licenses to your content;
  • Methods for creating and sharing your content with others.

What May I Do?

Image Source: Fotor.com. The Ultimate Image Guide.  CC-BY-SA 3.0

Content Creation Tools

CC & Software

  • Microsoft Office 2013 (PC only) provides an Add-in that will allow you to place your selected CC license on your documents.  This license will also become part of the metadata for that document.  Find out more from the Microsoft Website.
  • In OpenOffice or LibreOffice, there is also a Creative Commons Add-in that allows license information to be embedded in OpenOffice.org Writer, Impress, Draw and Calc documents.  You can download  from OpenOffice and LibreOffice CC.  
  • There are other content creation applications that have CC licensing Add-Ins and a full list is available at the CC website.
  • Use the CC license selector site to create HTML code to add to any webpage that you have made that you would like to share.  

Mix Content

  • OER Commons Contribute Tools allow you to combine text, pictures, sound, files and video.  You can add CC licensing, print and download content as a PDF, and share with others through the OER Commons repository.

Share Content

  • OER Commons   The OER Commons is a single search source that pulls from multiple OER collections, including MERLOT and Connexions.   
  • MERLOT  is a free and open peer reviewed collection of online teaching and learning materials and faculty-developed services contributed and used by an international education community. 

License Compatibility

When you have found the CC licensing you want to use, it is important to know how you can license your adapteed work. Here is a table of the CC licenses - and how that license can be subsequently licensed.  Also watch the video below for another look at combining licenses.  

  Resulting work can be licensed as:      
Original License BY BY-SA  BY-NC   BY-NC-SA BY ND   BY-NC-ND
CC BY X  X X   X X  X 
CC BY-SA   X         
CC BY-NC    X X  X     
CC BY-NC-SA       X     
CC BY-ND*            
CC BY-NC-ND*            

*For ND licensed content you would just be providing links to the content and not remixing they content into a new creation, you are not restricted in how you license the content you create. 

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