Creative Commons

Creative Commons is a non-profit organization that provides free, easy-to-use copyright licenses to make a simple and standardized way to give the public permission to share and use creative work. Creative Commons licenses are not an alternative to copyright. They work alongside copyright and enable you to modify your copyright terms to best suit your needs.

History[edit | edit source]

Creative Commons was founded in 2001 by Lawrence Lessig, Hal Abelson, and Eric Eldred with the aim of expanding the range of creative works available for others to build upon legally and to share. The organization has released several copyright licenses, known as Creative Commons licenses, free of charge to the public.

Creative Commons licenses[edit | edit source]

Creative Commons licenses are legal tools that creators and other rights holders can use to offer certain usage rights to the public, while reserving other rights. These licenses are easy to use and understand, and they have been adopted by millions of creators, institutions, and organizations around the world to legally share digital resources.

There are six main types of Creative Commons licenses:

CC BY: This license allows others to distribute, remix, adapt, and build upon your work, even commercially, as long as they credit you for the original creation.
CC BY-SA: This license allows others to remix, adapt, and build upon your work even for commercial purposes, as long as they credit you and license their new creations under the identical terms.
CC BY-ND: This license allows for redistribution, commercial and non-commercial, as long as it is passed along unchanged and in whole, with credit to you.
CC BY-NC: This license allows others to remix, adapt, and build upon your work non-commercially, and although their new works must also acknowledge you and be non-commercial, they don’t have to license their derivative works on the same terms.
CC BY-NC-SA: This license allows others to remix, adapt, and build upon your work non-commercially, as long as they credit you and license their new creations under the identical terms.
CC BY-NC-ND: This license is the most restrictive of the six main licenses, only allowing others to download your works and share them with others as long as they credit you, but they can’t change them in any way or use them commercially.

Application in Medicine[edit | edit source]

In the field of medicine, Creative Commons licenses are often used to share research articles, medical data, and educational resources. This allows for greater collaboration, faster dissemination of knowledge and improved healthcare outcomes. For example, the Public Library of Science (PLOS) and BioMed Central are among the many publishers in the medical field that use Creative Commons licenses.