Open Research

Traditional licences, generally restrict rights to the copyright owner and/or content provider. 

Open licences are about enabling other people to reuse the content.

An Open Licence is used to grant certain permissions to the readers of your work and  make it easier for other people to understand what they are allowed to do with the material. For example the license may grant people permission to use and share the work with others as long as they acknowledge the source of the work. 

The Open Source Initiative  describes the main Open Source licenses for software.

If you publish your work on an Open Access basis or make your research data open, it will usually be distributed under the terms of one of the Creative Commons Licenses.  The Creative Commons Licenses are summarised below, but please check the full details to fully understand each licence.

CC BY
This license lets others distribute, remix, adapt, and build upon your work, even commercially, as long as they credit you for the original creation.

CC BY-SA
This license lets others distribute, remix, adapt, and build upon your work even for commercial purposes, as long as they credit you and license their new creations under the identical terms.

CC BY-NC

This license allows others to distribute, remix, adapt, and build upon your workl in any medium or format for noncommercial purposes only, and only so long as attribution is given to you

CC BY-ND
This license lets others copy and distribute your work, including commercially; however, it cannot be shared with others in adapted form, and credit must be provided to you.

CC BY-NC-SA
This license lets others distribute, remix, adapt, and build upon your work non-commercially, as long as they credit you and license their new creations under the identical terms.

CC BY-NC-ND
This license is the most restrictive license, only allowing others to download your works and share them with others as long as they credit you, but they can’t change them in any way or use them commercially.

The Library's web pages about Open Access and rights retention provide detailed information about how to publish your work Open Access.