Our Board of Directors has decided to use a Creative Commons license for our future publications, following the initiative of the Task Force Open Science. The decision reinforces our position as an active advocate of open science and open access publishing.
The chosen licence is CC BY, which allows for the redistribution, the creation of derivatives (such as translations), and the use of the publication for commercial activities, provided that appropriate credit is given to the author (BY) and that the user indicates whether the publication has been changed.
Creative Commons is the most widespread open content licencing model and can be considered the de facto licence of its kind. It is the licence of choice for leading open access publishers such as the Public Library of Science. Creative Commons works within copyright law, effectively changing ´all rights reserved´ to ´some rights reserved´.
Up until now, all our publications have been published with a standard copyright notice, protecting our exclusive rights to publish and distribute the work and requiring permission to reproduce the work.
Moving forward, the CC BY license will allow anyone to reuse or adapt the content, but also requires users to give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. This may be done in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests that the original authors endorse the adaption. For full license details please see the Creative Commons webpage. Creative Commons also maintains a Frequently Asked Questions about the licenses.
The European Commission recently made a decision to publish using CC BY, concluding that the licence satisfies their legal standards to "protect the interest and the public image of the EU".