The internationally recognized Creative Commons model has largely established itself in the open-access context; therefore, Creative Commons licenses can also by applied to content on Refubium.

Creative Commons licenses are used by creators to grant the public the right to use their publications in certain ways. For that purpose, the non-profit organisation "Creative Commons" has developped six standard licenses that creators can use to legally define terms and conditions for the use of their work.

The licenses are characterized by the possibility to combine different ready-made components that serve to either give permissions or make restrictions.

The four basic components that can be combined in a license are these:

Acronym	Description	Explanation
BY	Attribution	Creator has to be named.
NC	Noncommercial	Commercial use of the work or use for financial gain is not permitted.
ND	No Derivatives	Adaptations of the work are not permitted.
SA	Share Alike	Redistribution of (adapted versions of) the work are permitted only under the terms of the original license.

The four license components can be combined in six meaningful ways, resulting in different levels of restrictiveness:

License	Description
CC-BY	Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
CC-BY-SA	Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0)
CC-BY-ND	Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-ND 4.0)
CC-BY-NC	Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)
CC-BY-NC-ND	Attribution- NonCommerzial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)
CC-BY-NC-SA	Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)

You can also use Public Domain CC0 (No Rights Reserved) you want to impose no restrictions at all.
The use of CC0 declares your publication to be in the public domain, which means that the work can be used completely freely. The author or rights holder declares that they completely waive any rights to their work.

In contrast to CC0, the Public Domain Mark (No Known Copyright) is not a declaration by which the rights holder declares their work to be in the public domain, but a label for works that are already in the public domain. This can occur, for example, after the term of protection of a work has expired. Copyrights are only granted for a certain period of time; they expire 70 years after the death of the author.

Important notes for you as licensor:

• Licensors should read and understand the terms of the selected license before they apply it.

• Once a CC license has been applied to a work / a publication, it cannot be retracted. (Licenses are irrevocable.)

• The rights management and the application of CC licenses lies completely in the author's / the creator's / the rights holder's responsibility.
• By applying a CC licenses, you will not enter into an agreement with Creative Commons, the organization, nor will you transfer any of your rights to the organization.
• Authors who have already transferred the entire rights to their work to a publisher can no longer apply a CC license at a later point in time.