Copyright and Licence with the University of Edinburgh

Upon acceptance of publication each staff member with a responsibility for research agrees to grant the University of Edinburgh a non‐exclusive, irrevocable, worldwide licence to make manuscripts of their scholarly articles publicly available under the terms of a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) licence, or a more permissive licence. Source: Research Publications & Copyright Policy
Whilst the policy does not apply to monographs, scholarly editions, text books, book chapters, collections of essays, datasets, or other outputs that are not scholarly articles, the University strongly encourages researchers to make them as openly available as possible. Source: Research Publications & Copyright Policy
The University supports the broad global consensus that publicly funded research data should be made openly available as soon as possible with as few restrictions as necessary8. Additionally, many UK and international funders have embraced FAIR principles for data sharing (making data findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable). FAIR acknowledges legitimate reasons for restricting access to data, such as confidentiality concerns, suggesting the need for information governance processes over usage when necessary10. Principal Investigators and research students should consider how they can best make their data FAIR in their Data Management Plans. Discoverability and access by machines is considered as important as access by humans, in order to accelerate global science and progress Open Research. FAIR calls for the use of persistent identifiers, standard metadata, vocabularies and licences to allow researchers and computer programs to directly access and process data. An emphasis on reusability means that any relevant documentation, protocols, or designs which add context and usefulness to the data should be included with research data in repositories. Links to relevant publications, people, projects, and other research products such as software or source code should be provided in metadata records, with persistent identifiers when available. Source: Research Data Management Policy

CC and AI

Types of CC Licenses

CC BY

Enables reusers to distribute and build upon the material in any medium or format so long as attribution is given to the creator. Allows commercial use. (BY means giving credit to the creator)

CC BY-SA

Additional restriction: If there is an adaptation, or build upon material, you must license the modified material under identical terms. (SA means adaptations must be shared under the same terms)

CC BY NC

It allows reproduction, adaptation, build upon the material in any medium format for non commercial purposes only and only so long as attribution is given to the creator. (NC means only noncommercial uses of the work are permitted.)

CC BY NC SA

The additional restriction is that any modified material (with noncommercial purpose) should be license identically to the original material.

CC BY ND

Enables reusers to copy and distribute the material in any medium or format in unadapted form only, and only so long as attribution is given to the creator. (ND No derivatives or adaptations of the work are permitted)

CC BY NC ND

License enables reusers to copy and distribute the material in unadapted forms only and for noncommercial purposes only. Attribution is given to the creator.

Finally there is a CC0 (CC Zero)

Which is a public dedication tool, which enables creators to give up their copyright and put their worls into the worldwide public domain. No additional conditions apply.

How to apply a CC license or CC0 to your work

All you have to do is choose the CC license that suits your needs and then communicate this choice in a way that will be clear to people who come across your work. As part of this communication, you should include a link to the license you’ve chosen.

This can be as simple as a bit of text stating and linking to the license in a copyright notice, like this:

…or as complex as embedding the license information on your website using the HTML code associated with the particular license. Use the CC license chooser to get the relevant HTML code.