openpublishing@oulu.fi
Pursuant to the legislation currently in force in Finland the creator of a literary or artistic work holds the copyright to it. This applies also in cases where the creator has created the work while being employed by a certain organisation, e.g. a university, and additional agreements have not been made during the creation of the work. If there is more than one creator, all of the creators of the work in question (article, publication etc.) hold the copyright to it.
With Creative Commons licenses, you can define the terms of use for open materials. Using a CC license does not mean giving up your copyright; rather, it allows you to specify the necessary rights for reuse and sharing of your work. By combining different license elements, you can choose the license that best suits your needs. To help you select the appropriate license, you can use the CC License Chooser. A CC license is applied by adding the selected license to the work or alongside it, following the license instructions.
The University of Oulu recommends that researchers publish their work under a CC BY license in open access channels, or choose a publication channel that allows immediate self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version and license it under CC BY.
Creative Commons licenses offer four elements (BY, NC, ND, SA), which can be combined to form six different CC licenses. All licenses (except for CC0) include the BY condition, which allows anyone to use the work according to the license terms without needing the author's permission. However, the author's name must always be credited.
CC BY (Attribution).
The work may be freely copied, distributed, performed, and modified, including for commercial purposes. The author's name must always be properly credited, and a link or reference to the original work must be provided. Any modifications made must be indicated, and the author's name, image, or logo may not be altered.
CC BY is the most common license for open content and is a highly effective way to reach a wide audience.
CC BY-SA (Attribution-ShareAlike)
The work can be copied, distributed, displayed, performed, and modified, as long it is distributed on the same terms. If the work is distributed or modified under other terms, permission for that must be obtained first.
CC BY-NC (Attribution-NonCommercial).
The work can be copied, distributed, displayed, performed, and modified, but the work cannot be used commercially unless a permission is obtained from the author. Since the definition of commercial use is unclear, users must evaluate each situation individually.
CC BY-NC-SA (Attribution-NonCommerial-ShareAlike)
The work can be copied, distributed, displayed, performed, and modified only for non-commercial purposes, as long it is distributed on the same terms.
CC BY-NC-ND (Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives)
The work can be copied, distributed, displayed and performed, but the work cannot be modified in any way. In addition, it cannot be used for commercial purposes.
CC0 = Public Domain
The author waives all interests that may exist in his or her work worldwide (good scientific conduct presupposes attribution, however).
