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Copyright and Licensing for Digital Projects

This guide supports scholars who want to learn about applying Creative Commons licenses to their creative digital works. It is also a resource to find Creative Commons licensed digital media and support for making fair use judgments.

Digital Projects & Creative Commons Licensing

Neon sign that reads Open

"Round open neon sign" by Finn Hackshaw. License.

Digital projects are scholarly and creative works that reuse, remix, create and share primary and secondary data and digital media for scholarly purposes. They are academic digital scholarship products that are enhanced by various disciplinary and interdisciplinary digital technology, tools, and methodologies. These digital scholarship creative work types can take shape as digital book companions, digital editions, digital exhibits, digital maps, and digital media collections and archives. They are usually made publicly and openly available for reuse.

Creative Commons logo

  • Share your creative works so for people to access it publicly
  • Communicates to people how they can or cannot use your creative works
  • Supports retaining your copyrights
  • Requires content users to give you credit and attribution whenever they use your creative works

Creative Commons License Spectrum

Creative commons license spectrum between public domain (top) and all rights reserved (bottom). Left side indicates the use-cases allowed, right side the license components. The dark green area indicates Free Cultural Works compatible licenses, the two green areas compatibility with the Remix culture.

       More details Creative commons license spectrum between public domain (top) and all rights reserved (bottom) by Shaddim

Image by Shaddim, shared under a CC BY 4.0 License via Wikipedia