Which licenses should researchers use when sharing their research in open access?

Research results must be published in open access under an open license that allows others to freely use, modify, and share the work. The recommended licenses for this purpose are CC BY or CC BY-SA.

For monographs or other extensive scientific publications that contain material owned by third parties, a less permissive license may be necessary. In such cases, the work may be published under CC BY-NC (Non Commercial) or CC BY-ND (No Derivatives)

Example: A scientific monograph contains photographs of artworks for which the museum holds the copyright. Because a third party (the museum) holds rights to part of the monograph, the final publication may be made available in open access under the CC BY-NY or CC BY-ND license. If the monograph did not contain any third party copyrighted content, it should not be published under “NC” or “ND” restrictions. Instead, it would be published under an open license such as CC BY or CC BY-SA.

If metadata happen to be protected by copyright, they must be published under a CC0 license. If CC0 cannot be applied , the fallback option is CC BY.