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130 the scientific literature (Suber 2004–2010). Publications freely available to the reader are more frequently cited than publications behind a pay wall (Swan 2010). Furthermore, a growing number of funding agencies (see, e.g., Wellcome Trust 2003–2011, or the OA pilot of the Seventh Research Framework Programme, European Commission 2011), as well as the public, are asking for free and open access to the results of publicly-funded research.

The original Bethesda Open Access declaration (Brown et al. 2003) includes the right to create and distribute derivative works. Some OA journals, however, do not grant such rights. Parts of the research community, e.g. some authors choosing an OA journal, consider read-access sufficient. Based on anecdotal evidence, this may in part be because they erroneously believe that permissions for the most typical re-use scenarios (e.g., disseminating lecture materials that include other researcher’s published graphs or images on a conference website) are already granted. The majority of Open Access journals today, however, provide licenses that do indeed confer broad re-use rights. This gives the journals significant advantages in dissemination and broadens the researchers’ legal re-use options. It greatly simplifies the ways in which future works may build on existing ones (see, e.g., Bourne et al. 2008; MacCallum 2007).

Closely related to the Open Access movement is the Open Educational Resources movement (OER, see, e.g., Wilson-Strydom 2009; Butcher 2011). Clearly, re-use and adaptation rights are vital for educational resources (Keller and Mossink 2008).

Individuals or organizations desiring to grant Open Access and defined community re-use of their creative works can do so by creating their own individual terms-of-use. For the copyright owner and license giver (licensor), this may often appear to be the simplest and safest way to proceed. For re-users (licensees), however, legal advice may be required to assess whether individual terms-of-use permit their intended use in their own jurisdiction. Not doing so carries the risk of unwitting copyright violations that may result in legal action. The administrative and legal cost of handling a large diversity of such terms-of-use can become an impediment to re-use. At the same time, there is a substantial risk to the copyright holder that self-created terms-of-use licenses may have undesired outcomes, particularly when interpreted under multiple jurisdictions on a global scale.

Creative Commons (abbreviated CC) licenses have been created to address these problems. These licenses provide standardized terms-of-use definitions. Amongst the ca. 2.2 million articles deposited in PubMed Central, already about 10% are CC-licensed (U.S. National Library of Medicine 2011b; Björk et al. 2010).

Creative Commons

Creative Commons is a US-based non-profit organization that authors, reviews, and publishes a suite of licenses defining standard options for the distribution and re-use of creative, copyrightable works. Together with its world-wide affiliate organizations and partners, it provides standardized and scrutinized license texts, translation into languages and adaptations for various jurisdictions