For more information and questions about copyright, contact the Copyright Officer, Stephanie Towery or check out the resources available at the Texas State Copyright Office and the Copyright Research Guide.
The first step in choosing a Creative Commons License for your work is to determine if you or your employer owns the copyright in your work. Sometimes you own the work you create, and sometimes your employer owns it.
Texas State University allows employees to own the copyright in their scholarly work, with few exceptions. Generally, unless you are working under the terms of a grant or other agreement, you will own the copyright in your work. Note that when you are working with the Office of Distance and Extended Learning you usually are working under an agreement that makes the university the copyright owner of your work.
For University Owned Work
If you are working with a grant or if you have an agreement with ODEL, you can still choose Creative Commons licenses for work you have created but that the university owns.
Many sponsors require the university to license sponsored work with an open license. In this case, faculty creators may choose one of two license options. Both licenses are considered truly open and meet federal open requirements:
CC BY 4.0
This license allows the user to
- Share — copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format
- Adapt — remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercially.
The licensor cannot revoke these freedoms as long as the user follows the license terms. Those terms are:
- Attribution — The user must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. The user may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses the user or their use.
- No additional restrictions — The user may not apply legal terms or technological measures that legally restrict others from doing anything the license permits.
CC BY SA 4.0
This license is the same as CC BY 4.0, plus on additional restriction:
- ShareAlike — If the user remixes, transforms, or builds upon the material, the user must distribute your contributions under the same license as the original.
So, CC BY SA requires the user to license their work under a CC BY SA license.
For Work you Own
For work you own, you may select the two licenses above or you can choose any of the more restrictive Creative Commons licenses.
If you are concerned about the integrity of the work and do not want people to share modifications of your work, you might select
CC BY ND 4.0
This license allows the user to:
- Share — copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format for any purpose, even commercially.
The licensor cannot revoke these freedoms as long as the user follows the license terms. Those terms are:
- Attribution — The user must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. The user may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses the user or their use.
- No additional restrictions — The user may not apply legal terms or technological measures that legally restrict others from doing anything the license permits
I don’t recommend choosing any of the more restrictive licenses, because I think they are too restrictive to be useful, but if the above options don’t appeal to you, there are three more options available. For help selecting those, I recommend the information available at Creative Commons. Feel free to contact me at copyrightoffice@txstate.edu for more explanation about how the licenses work. I also have a short video about the different Creative Commons licenses available.
If you would like more detailed information about choosing a Creative Commons License for your Work, I recommend this helpful guidance from Creative Commons.
If you would like more information about the university’s copyright policy, see UPPS 01.04.27 Intellectual Property: Ownership and Use of Copyrighted Works.