Impact on ownership when choosing a CC BY-NC or CC BY-NC-ND Creative Commons License

When publishing open access, authors retain copyright over their work and apply an open license that states the conditions for reuse by others. This is usually a Creative Commons (CC) license. However, when selecting a license with an NC and/or ND restriction, authors commonly (but unknowingly) transfer the exclusive right to manage the license to their publisher. This is stated in the “License to Publish agreement”, but not all publishers communicate this clearly to authors (view examples of publisher policies).

When a license with an NC and/or ND restriction is used, the right to manage the license includes the right to reuse the publication either commercially or in adapted form (e.g. a translation) and grant third parties the right to do so. Publishers need not and will not consult the author(s) on these matters. Publishers can authorize commercial reuse at their sole discretion and charge third parties for permission to reuse, redistribute, adapt, and/or make the work further known. In this way, the right to commercially reuse a publication or make adaptations becomes an extra revenue stream for publishers. This is contrary to the common assumption that the authors, as copyright owners, will retain these rights.

What is the best license to choose?

It is important to check if the article is subject to specific funder requirements. For example, for Horizon Europe and NWO projects, it is mandatory to apply a CC-BY license to articles, in order to ensure maximum reuse for the publication. Read more about the Plan S regulations which are incorporated by many funders in their policies here: https://www.coalition-s.org/about/. The institution may also have a policy on which license to use, please contact the open access contact person at your institution to find out more.

Without funder or institutional requirements, the author has no restrictions on which license to choose. Even so, a CC-BY license^[1] is usually recommended because it facilitates the widest form of reuse, and at the same time, authors retain most rights. For more information about the Creative Commons license types, see the website page Creative Commons Licenses or consult the ‘Guide to Creative Commons for Scholarly Publications and Educational Resources’.

What alternatives do you have?

It is important to consider what you want to protect with a non-commercial or non-derivative license. If it is a model, an image, or data that you wish to protect, we recommend the following steps. In this way, the right to commercially reuse the object and make derivatives remains with the author.

STEP 1: Determine the object you want to protect.
STEP 2: Deposit the object in a trusted repository before publication and apply a CC BY-NC or CC BY-ND or CC BY-NC-ND license, depending on your needs.
STEP 3: Publish the article under a CC BY license and reference the object previously deposited in the repository in the article.

Trustworthy data repositories such as Zenodo, 4TU ResearchData, or DataVerseNL do not take over control of the license from the depositor. Authors retain the rights and permissions to reuse and redistribute their data, images, models, or other objects. Once the object is safely deposited and appropriately licensed, authors can proceed to publish the article under a CC BY license. This will enable the text of the article to be widely reused, while the object will be protected from unauthorized commercial reuse and derivatives.