Mission of Creative Commons: CC Licenses are designed to "overcome legal obstacles to the sharing of knowledge and creativity to address the world’s pressing challenges." (Creative Commons, n.d.)
A Creative Commons License is a type of open-license that allows others to access, use, copy, remix, edit, and redistribute a resource. This is the most commonly-used type of open-license. A CC license still maintains the credit to the original licensor and creator. For instance, if you adopt an open textbook in your course, but only use portions of it to create a course pack, the original creator of the book you used is still listed as the author of the unaltered version under a CC license.
CC-BY (Attribution): This is the most liberal license given. This means that you can use the item for any purpose as long as you give credit to the original author.
CC-BY-NC (Non-Commercial): You can use, share, adapt, remix the item for noncommercial purposes only and must give proper attribution to the original creator.
CC-BY-SA (Share Alike): You can use, share, adapt, remix the item, as long as you give credit to the original author, and any adaptations of the item must be shared under the same license.
CC-BY-ND (No Derivatives): You can use and distribute the item as it currently stands. You must give proper attribution to the original author and not make any changes or adaptations.
CC-BY-NC-SA (Attribution-Non Commercial-Share Alike): You can use, share, adapt, remix the item, as long as you give credit to the original author, for non commercial purposes, and any adaptations are shared under the same license.
CC-BY-NC-ND (Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives): This is the most restrictive license. You can use and share the item for noncommercial purposes, as long as you give credit to the original author. However, no adaptations are permitted with this license.
Creative Commons buttons, by Creative Commons, are licensed under CC-BY 4.0.
Please note that any license with the ND (No Derivatives) element condition is NOT considered true OER.
CC0 (Public Domain): The above button is used by creators to dedicate their work to the Public Domain. Anything in the Public Domain can be used, distributed, remixed, and adapted with no conditions.
Public Domain: You may also see this mark for any items that are known to already be in the Public Domain.
It is good practice to apply the TASL method when you are attributing CC-Licensed materials:
Title– The title of the work
Author– The author(s) of the work, and a link to the author’s profile page (if available)
Source– Link to where the source was found or “lives”
License– Link to the license deed
Ex.
“Introduction to Communication Research: Becoming a Scholar” by Lindsey Jo Hand, Erin Ryan, and Karen Sichler is licensed under CC-BY 4.0
If you are mixing and matching resources with different CC Licenses, please note that any license you take out on your work only applies to your own contributions. The licenses applied to the original works still apply.
You can use this chart to see what licenses can be remixed/adapted:
Use this chart to decide what license you can apply to your adapted work:
“CC Adaptors License chart” by Creative Commons is licensed under CC BY 4.0
Creative Commons. (n.d.). Frequently asked questions: Can I combine material under different Creative Commons licenses in my work? https://creativecommons.org/faq/#can-i-combine-material-under-different-creative-commons-licenses-in-my-work