The open access article and the closed access article meet. The closed access article has never heard of the Creative Commons licences under which the open access article has been published, so the open access article has to explain what they are.
Creative Commons is a nonprofit organization that enables the sharing and use of creativity and knowledge through free legal tools.
Our free, easy-to-use copyright licensesprovide a simple, standardized way to give the public permission to share and use your creative work — on conditions of your choice. CC licenses let you easily change your copyright terms from the default of “all rights reserved” to “some rights reserved.”
Creative Commons licenses are not an alternative to copyright. They work alongside copyright and enable you to modify your copyright terms to best suit your needs.
Probably the quickest and easiest introduction to CC is to watch the following short video
In 2002, the Budapest Open Access Initiative articulated the basic tenets of Open Access for the first time. Since then, thousands of journals have adopted policies that embrace some or all of the Open Access core components related to: readership, reuse, copyright, posting, and machine readability. However, not all Open Access is created equal. For example, a policy that allows anyone to read an article for free six months after its publication is more open than a policy that creates a twelve month embargo; it is also less open than a policy that allows for free reading immediately upon publication.
This guide will help you move beyond the seemingly simple question, “Is this journal open access?” and toward a more productive alternative, “How open is it?”
Use it to:
• Understand the components that define Open Access
• Learn what makes a journal more open vs. less open
• Make informed decisions about where to publish
Download the guide: How Open Is It?
For further information The SPARC Author Addendum
About SPARC
SHERPA is investigating issues in the future of scholarly communication. It is developing open-access institutional repositories in universities to facilitate the rapid and efficient worldwide dissemination of research
http://www.sherpa.ac.uk