Which Creative Commons license should I use for my scholarly article? 

Our office typically recommends a Creative Commons Attribution license (CC BY 4.0). However, per IP01 the decision is solely up to you and any limitations set by your journal or publisher. The CC BY 4.0 license offers the least number of restrictions for the end user, therefore allowing access to your article by the greatest number of users.  

We discourage the use of ND (NoDerivatives) licenses because they do not allow for adaptations, including translation. We also discourage the use of SA (ShareAlike) licenses because of the challenges this license creates for downstream users. You can find more information about the different types of licenses on our Creative Commons licenses webpage as well as the Creative Commons About CC Licenses page.  

Whichever license you ultimately choose, using a Creative Commons license increases the impact of your work.  

If you have further questions about Creative Commons licenses or copyright, please contact the Libraries' Office of Scholarly Communications and Copyright.