Which Creative Commons licence is best for OER?

Use CC BY 4.0 for open educational resources unless your institution, funder or jurisdiction demands that adapted versions carry the same licence terms. Then the safest next step is CC BY-SA 4.0. CC BY grants permission to retain, reuse, revise, remix and redistribute the work with a single condition: give credit. NonCommercial and NoDerivatives clauses conflict with the core OER mission, and the comparison below explains why. The contract separates the open-license permission from separate requirements: academic citation, institutional policy, funder rules and statutory exceptions like fair use or fair dealing.

Creative Commons licenses are standard copyright tools, not contracts with the nonprofit. They operate on top of copyright: the creator retains copyright while granting the public specified permissions in advance. The current suite contains six 4.0 International licenses. All require credit. The four conditions are BY (Attribution), SA (ShareAlike), NC (NonCommercial) and ND (NoDerivatives).

For open educational resources, the critical distinction is whether the license permits the 5R activities: retain, reuse, revise, remix, redistribute. BY and BY-SA support all five. ND blocks shared revision and remixing. NC narrows the contexts in which a teacher or student can use the work, especially when a school charges tuition or a nonprofit runs a commercial workshop.

BY, Credit Under 4.0

Under 4.0, a reuser must retain, when supplied by the licensor: identification of the creator and designated attribution parties; a copyright notice; a notice referring to the license; a warranty disclaimer; and a URI or hyperlink to the work where reasonably practicable. The reuser must link or refer to the license and indicate modifications, retaining earlier modification notices. Do this in any reasonable manner for the medium. Version 4.0 does not separately require the work's title, although including it is useful practice. If the licensor requests it, credit information must be removed where reasonably practicable. Credit must not imply endorsement.

SA, ShareAlike

This condition triggers when Adapted Material is shared, not when unchanged work merely appears beside other separate works in a collection. The adapter applies the license named by the applicable SA clause or an officially designated compatible license. Do not assume two SA licenses are compatible. The official compatibility list controls. Creative Commons lists one-way compatibility from BY-SA 4.0 to GPLv3 for adapted material; this does not turn a CC license into a software license or create compatibility in the reverse direction.

NC, NonCommercial

Version 4.0 defines it as not primarily intended for or directed toward commercial advantage or monetary compensation. The identity of the user, business, nonprofit, school or individual, does not decide the issue by itself. Advertising, sponsorship, fundraising, internal business use and mixed purposes require context. Do not invent a bright-line rule. If the planned use has material commercial risk, get separate permission or local legal advice.

ND, NoDerivatives

Sharing Adapted Material is not permitted under an ND license. Reproduction in a different format alone does not create Adapted Material under the 4.0 definition. Translation is normally an adaptation. Synchronising music with a moving image is expressly Adapted Material under 4.0. Whether cropping, excerpting, editing or combining creates an adaptation can depend on applicable copyright law; do not declare a universal boundary.

Open educational resources need permissions to retain, reuse, revise, remix and redistribute. BY and BY-SA support those activities. ND prevents shared revision and remixing. A teacher cannot adapt the work for a different class, language or curriculum and then share the result. NC narrows downstream contexts: a university that charges tuition, a school that solicits donations, or a teacher who posts work on a platform that runs ads may all fall outside the NonCommercial definition. Version 4.0's definition does not turn on the identity of the user, so a for-profit training company may sometimes qualify and a public school may sometimes be disqualified.

The consequence is that NC and ND licenses reduce the practical value of an OER. A resource under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 allows only NonCommercial sharing of unadapted work. That is the most restrictive of the six licenses. It makes the least sense for an OER.

Licence	Retain	Reuse	Revise	Remix	Redistribute
CC BY 4.0	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
CC BY-SA 4.0	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes, under same licence
CC BY-ND 4.0	Yes	Yes	No	No	Yes, unadapted only
CC BY-NC 4.0	Yes	Yes, NC only	Yes, NC only	Yes, NC only	Yes, NC only
CC BY-NC-SA 4.0	Yes	Yes, NC only	Yes, NC only	Yes, NC only	Yes, under same licence, NC only
CC BY-NC-ND 4.0	Yes	Yes, NC only	No	No	Yes, unadapted, NC only

Academic citation and license credit serve different purposes. Under 4.0, credit must include the creator, license notice, source URI and indication of changes. An academic citation, author, title, journal, date, does not satisfy the license condition unless it also includes the exact license and version. Do both.

Institutional policy, funder rules and repository terms are additional constraints. A funder may mandate CC BY for all grant-funded work. A university repository may require CC BY-SA. A journal may use CC BY-NC. These override the creator's preference if the creator has agreed to them. Read the exact license on each work; do not assume a repository's default.

Statutory exceptions such as fair use or fair dealing operate separately. The license only applies where copyright or similar rights require permission. If an exception authorises the use, the license's conditions do not apply to that use. Their scope varies by jurisdiction. Version 4.0 expressly addresses sui generis database rights. It does not license patent or trademark rights. Moral, privacy and personality rights are handled only to the limited extent stated in the legal code.

No single answer fits every situation. The deciding factors are:

• Does your funder or institution mandate a specific license? If yes, use that license and no other.
• Does your jurisdiction recognise moral rights that the 4.0 license does not fully address? If yes, get local legal advice before applying the license.
• Will downstream users need to share adaptations under the same terms? If yes, use CC BY-SA 4.0. If no, use CC BY 4.0.
• Will the work be combined with other works that use incompatible licenses? Check the official compatibility chart. Two SA licenses are not automatically compatible.
• Are you certain you control all rights in the work? Confirm joint authors, employment ownership, commissioned-work terms, performer rights, samples and third-party inclusions. Only the copyright holder, or someone with express authority, may apply a CC license.

Version 4.0 is the recommended choice for a new license unless a specific, informed reason requires an older version or port. A license already attached to someone else's work cannot be unilaterally upgraded by a reuser.

Before you apply any license, confirm that you control all the rights in the work. A common failure in OER licensing is not choosing the wrong condition. It is applying a license to work that includes third-party content, samples, commissioned illustrations or data from a source that does not permit CC licensing. If you do not own every element, get permission from each rights holder, replace the element, or use a source that is itself openly licensed. A CC badge on a page does not guarantee that every component is covered.