Choosing your re-use license

When sharing research data or other academic outputs, a range of open access licenses can be attached. These allow the copyright owner to retain their copyright, whilst providing explicit reuse permissions and obligations up front.

Recommended license

The license recommended by the University (and ARC, see Section 6.4, and NHMRC, see Section 1.3.3) is the Creative Commons CC BY 4.0 license

Rights given:

• Share — copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format
• Adapt — remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercially

Requirements:

• Attribution — The original creator (and any other nominated parties) must be credited and the source linked to.  

Alternative licenses

Creative Commons licenses can be modified to include additional restrictions. These advanced options should be used with caution, as they can have significant impact on the the work's reusability:

• Non-commercial — Lets others copy, distribute, display and perform the work for noncommercial purposes only.  
• No derivatives — Lets others distribute, display and perform only verbatim copies of the work. They may not adapt or change the work in any way.  
• Share alike — Allows others to remix, adapt and build on the work, but only if they distribute the derivative works under the same the licence terms that govern the original work.

For software and code, a range of open source licenses are available, including the MIT License, Apache License, BSD Licenses and GNU General Public License. Similar to the creative commons license variants, these software licenses attach varying permissions and obligations, but also address software-specific issues such as warranty waivers and patent granting to the licensees.

Finally, there are highly open licenses that release your work to the public domain including the CC0 license, and the Unlicense.