Intellectual Property Considerations

Rights holders who want to share their scholarship can choose to make it openly available online by publishing it as open access, either as an individual work that is freely available within a subscription resource, i.e., a “hybrid” journal, or by publishing their work in an open access journal or monograph.

The intellectual property considerations when publishing open access are similar: you, as the copyright holder, can choose to keep your copyright but attach your own terms of use to your work, thus bypassing the publication agreement process. Authors who choose to go this route often use Creative Commons licenses, which allow them to make their scholarship freely available but easily define how their works may be used. Each of these licenses offers you options related to the commercial or non-commercial use of your work; how it can be shared with others, or whether it can be used to create a derivative work. The graphic below highlights each one within a scale of least to most restrictive:

From Technology Enhanced Learning Blog http://www.dontwasteyourtime.co.uk/elearning/creative-commons-infographic-licenses-explained/