Licensing

How licences work and which apply to published work.

Last updated: October 2026

Why licences matter

A licence states what others may do with a piece of work. Choosing one deliberately affects how widely your work can be shared and reused.

Common open licences

Creative Commons licences are widely used for open access work. In brief:

CC BY: others may share and adapt the work, including commercially, if they credit you.
CC BY-SA: as CC BY, but adaptations must be shared under the same licence.
CC BY-NC: others may share and adapt the work with credit, but not for commercial use.
CC BY-ND: others may share the work with credit, but may not change it.
CC BY-NC-ND: the most restrictive of these; share with credit, non-commercially, without changes.

Licences on work we support

The licence that applies to a published paper is set by the journal or publisher and is stated on the paper itself. Where authors have a choice, we help them understand the options, but the decision is theirs.

Using content from this website

Unless a page says otherwise, material on this website is covered by our Copyright policy and is not offered under an open licence.

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