Open Educational Resources (OER) at Montana State University

Creative Commons is a nonprofit organization that enables the sharing and use of creativity and knowledge through free legal tools. Creative Commons licenses are not an alternative to copyright. They work alongside copyright and enable you to modify your copyright terms to best suit your needs.

-- From Creative Commons website

• CC0 Public Domain Dedication Attribution 

• Attribution, CC BY 

• Attribution-ShareAlike, CC BY-SA 

• Attribution-NoDerivatives, CC BY-ND 

• Attribution-NonCommercial, CC BY-NC 

• Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike, CC BY-NC-SA 

• Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives, CC BY-NC-ND

How to Use the Licenses

• Things to Consider Before Licensing Your Work 

Outlines things to think about before applying Creative Commons license to your material, or use Creative Commons-licensed materials.

• Choose A License 

Contains information on how to choose the appropriate license for your work.

• Marking Your Work with CC License 

Learn how to mark your work with a Creative Commons license.

• Best Practices for Attribution 

Provides some good (and not so good) examples of attribution.

• Open Attribution Builder 

Easily cite open materials. This tool will automatically generate the attribution for you.

Understanding the Creative Commons Licenses