Copyright and Publication Essentials
Copyright is a legal form of intellectual property protection for authors, covering both published and unpublished works.
Publication is the process of distributing a work. Sometimes copyright is transferred from an author to an external publisher. In these cases, rights to distribute the document may be held by the publisher, ie, a journal or conference proceeding.
Posting a document to Digital Commons does not change your copyright ownership.
If you are sharing a work that has been published elsewhere, such as a journal or conference, please be sure you have distribution rights to the work.
You must agree to a Submission Agreement, which asks you to confirm you distribution rights to the work.
If you have questions about the ownership of a copyrighted work, please contact the library.
Creative Commons Licensing
Before submitting your research to Digital Commons, you'll need to decide if you want to apply a Creative Commons License to your work. (Creative Commons Licensing is optional, and you can opt for "none" on the submission form.)
What are the licenses and what do they mean?
Creative Commons (CC) licenses allow you to publish your work open access. The different licenses define what users of your work are allowed to do (and not do) with your work, such as copying, distributing, editing, remixing, and building upon your original work.
You will need to decide whether you want to restrict your work to viewing and download only, or if you are interested in allowing others remix, tweak, and build upon your work.
If you want to include a CC license, but aren't sure which license is best, try the Creative Commons License Chooser
The most restrictive license is 
CC BY-NC-ND (Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives)
This license allows 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.
includes the following elements:
BY – Credit must be given to the creator
NC – Only noncommercial uses of the work are permitted
ND – No derivatives or adaptations of the work are permitted
Creative Commons
What is Creative Commons?
Creative Commons is a nonprofit organization that "helps you legally share your knowledge and creativity to build a more equitable, accessible, and innovative world."
What are the licenses and what do they mean?
Creative Commons (CC) licenses allow you to publish your work open access. The different licenses define what users of your work are allowed to do (and not do) with your work, such as copying, distributing, editing, remixing, and building upon your original work.
All licenses and wording below comes directly from the Creative Commons website:
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This license lets others distribute, remix, tweak, and build upon your work, even commercially, as long as they credit you for the original creation. This is the most accommodating of licenses offered. Recommended for maximum dissemination and use of licensed materials. |
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This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon your work even for commercial purposes, as long as they credit you and license their new creations under the identical terms. This license is often compared to “copyleft” free and open source software licenses. All new works based on yours will carry the same license, so any derivatives will also allow commercial use. This is the license used by Wikipedia, and is recommended for materials that would benefit from incorporating content from Wikipedia and similarly licensed projects. |
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This license allows for redistribution, commercial and non-commercial, as long as it is passed along unchanged and in whole, with credit to you. |
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This license lets others remix, tweak, 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. |
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This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon your work non-commercially, as long as they credit you and license their new creations under the identical terms. |
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This license is the most restrictive of our 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. |
