Creative commons: Challenges and solutions for researchers; A publisher's perspective of copyright in an open access environment

Abstract

Copyright in the digital environment is evolving at an unprecedented rate. Copyright exists to protect the rights of an owner of an original piece of work by imposing restrictions on re-use but it does not always fit well with how we use and share information in the digital sphere. The growth of open access (OA) publishing has also added to the challenge as the right to reuse as well as read content has been emphasized. Creative Commons (CC) licences were introduced to try and bridge the gaps between the barriers imposed by traditional copyright and the realities of the digital environment but, as they are general licences, it is not always clear how they apply to specific situations. This article addresses some of the key questions around how the various licences can be applied in academic publishing, what some of the consequences are, and how they affect different research areas. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Licence ( 〈http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ >http://creativecommons. org/licenses/by/3.0/〉 ).