Creative Commons Licenses

The Creative Commons site has a simple way to choose a license for your work. Try the license chooser or the new beta version of the license chooser.

A decision to use a CC license on a work not only involves the type of license, but other considerations:

• A CC license cannot be revoked.
• A CC license is not used for software and physical objects.
• Make sure you as the creator are also the copyright holder. With work-for-hire the copyright holder may not be the creator, but the institution may hold copyright. Seek permission to apply a CC license in this case.
• CC licenses cannot be used on public domain material.
• Consult the CC Wiki for more considerations.

Faculty: See the blog post "How to Use Creative Commons Licenses for Your Academic Papers." 

Students: See the ebook Finding and Using Openly Licensed Images: A Quick Guide for Students.