Open licenses

By publishing your work under an open license, you can specify exactly how others may distribute and (re)use your work. On this page you can read which license UU recommends and what you should take into account.

Creative Commons licenses

A license consists of different ‘building blocks’, such as CC BY, CC BY-NC or CC BY-NC-ND. Each building block determines what someone else may or may not do with your work. Read more about the Creative Commons license types.

CC BY is preferred 

If you have the choice, we recommend a CC BY license only. This is because it gives authors the most rights to distribute and reuse the work. Anyone (including commercial parties) may distribute, reuse and transform it, as long as this is done with proper acknowledgement of the source. For example, by translating the work, including part of it in a syllabus, or using your data for a new analysis. This increases the impact of your work and always gets you recognition. Publishing under a CC BY license fits in with our vision of open science. 

License requirements of research funders

External funding bodies (i.e. not UU or UMC) often set requirements for the license under which you publish. Make sure you always meet these requirements.  

Options with the publisher  

The publisher often gives authors a limited choice of CC licenses, e.g. only CC BY, CC BY-NC or CC BY-NC-ND. Does your research funder require a more open license than the publisher offers? Then that requirement takes precedence, even if this means you have to find another publisher.