When depositing your electronic publication with the National Library of Australia for legal deposit, you can specify whether your publication has a Creative Commons license.

Creative Commons is a non-profit organisation that has produced a set of six simple, reusable licenses that allow you to release some rights and retain others. These licenses allow greater flexibility over how your publication can legally be used by others, and are an effective way to encourage creative interaction and reuse of your work.

Choosing a Creative Commons license does not impact the way others can access your electronic publication, this is controlled by the access condition you select. 

If your publication does not have a Creative Commons license or it is unknown, you can leave it at the default option 'Not applicable/Unknown'. 

Creative Commons licenses

License Type of use What others can do
Attribution (BY) Commercial and noncommercial use 
  • Share: copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format
  • Adapt: remix, transform, and build upon the material
  • They must attribute the original author
Attribution-Share Alike (BY-SA) Commercial and noncommercial use
  • Share: copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format
  • Adapt: remix, transform, and build upon the material
  • Any new works created must be licensed to others on the same terms as the original work
  • They must attribute the original author
Attribution-No Derivative Works (BY-ND) Commercial and noncommercial use
  • Copy and distribute verbatim copies only, attributing the original author.
Attribution-NonCommercial (CC BY-NC) Non-commercial use only
  • Copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format
  • Adapt: remix, transform, and build upon the material
  • They must attribute the original author
Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike (BY-NC-SA) Noncommercial use only
  • Share: copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format
  • Adapt: remix, transform, and build upon the material
  • Any new works created must be licensed to others on the same terms as the original work
  • They must attribute the original author.
Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works (BYNC-ND) Noncommercial use only
  • Copy and distribute verbatim copies only, attributing the original author.

More information

You can find further information through Creative Commons Australia and the Australian Copyright Council.