Licences
Authors keep their copyright. The licence you choose tells readers how they may reuse your work. It can only cover rights that you and your co-authors actually hold.
| Licence | What it allows |
|---|---|
| CC BY 4.0 | Anyone may share and adapt the work, including commercially, with attribution. Recommended. |
| CC BY-SA 4.0 | Like CC BY, but adaptations must be shared under the same licence. |
| CC BY-NC 4.0 | Sharing and adaptation with attribution, for non-commercial purposes only. |
| CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 | Non-commercial, with adaptations shared under the same licence. |
| CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 | Non-commercial sharing of the unmodified work only. |
| CC0 1.0 (public domain dedication) | You waive copyright and related rights to the extent the law allows, so anyone may use the work for any purpose. Other people’s rights in material included in the work are not affected. |
| PubArx non-exclusive licence to distribute | Readers may read and download the work for their own use; all other reuse rights stay with you. |
What a licence covers
- A licence covers only the rights that the authors hold. It does not affect patents, trademarks, or the rights of other people in material included in the work.
- Material owned by others, such as a figure reproduced with permission, is not covered by your licence unless its owner agreed. Credit it and state its terms, for example “Figure 3 reproduced from [12] with permission; not covered by the CC BY licence of this paper.”
- CC0 waives copyright and related rights to the extent the law allows. It does not waive other people’s rights or rights that cannot legally be waived.
Which version may you post?
Publishers usually distinguish three versions: the submitted manuscript (before peer review), the accepted manuscript (after peer review, before the publisher’s formatting) and the version of record (the publisher’s final PDF). Many allow the first two to be posted as preprints, sometimes after an embargo, but often not the version of record. Check your publisher’s policy, for example in the Open Policy Finder (Sherpa Romeo), or your agreement with the publisher, before posting.
Licences cannot be withdrawn
Creative Commons licences are irrevocable. Once a version is public under one, anyone who obtained it may keep using it under that licence, even if you post a new version, withdraw the paper, or access to it is later restricted. Choose carefully; a new version can use a different licence, but earlier versions keep theirs.
PubArx non-exclusive licence to distribute
Choosing this option keeps all reuse rights with you. Readers may read and download the work for their own use, but need your permission for anything else, such as redistributing or adapting it.
Whatever licence you choose for readers, every submission also gives the PubArx Community a non-exclusive, perpetual and irrevocable licence to store, copy, convert, display, distribute and preserve the work so that it can stay available on PubArx, as set out in the Terms of use. This does not transfer your copyright, and it does not allow us to sell your work or relicense it on other terms.
Reviews, endorsements and comments
Community contributions are published under CC BY 4.0, so they can be quoted and reused with attribution. Their authors keep the copyright.
Which licence should I choose?
CC BY 4.0 allows the widest reuse and satisfies most funders’ open-access requirements. Check your target journal’s preprint policy and any funder requirements before choosing.