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Medical Images

This guide provides VCU students and faculty with resources for studying and publishing health science images.

Creative Commons - What is It?/ Types of Licenses

Creative Commons - Click here for more information about creative commons licensing.

What is a creative commons license?

A Creative Commons (CC) license allows the owner of a image, literature piece or some other creative work to grant specific copyright persmissions for the use of their work. Creative Commons licenses are not an alternative to copyright; the license enables the copyright holder to modify the copyright terms to best suit their needs.

Types of Creative Commons Licenses:

About the licenses - creative commons Retrieved 9/4/2012, 2012, from http://creativecommons.org/licenses/

   Attribution      CC BY       

The Attribution license lets others distribute, remix, tweak, and build upon your work, even commercially, as long as they credit you for the original creation. This is the most accommodating of licenses offered. Recommended for maximum dissemination and use of licensed materials.

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   Attribution-ShareAlike   CC BY-SA

The Attribution-ShareAlike license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon your work even for commercial purposes, as long as they credit you and license their new creations under the identical terms. This license is often compared to “copyleft” free and open source software licenses. All new works based on yours will carry the same license, so any derivatives will also allow commercial use. This is the license used by Wikipedia, and is recommended for materials that would benefit from incorporating content from Wikipedia and similarly licensed projects.

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  Attribution-NoDerivs      CC BY-ND

The Attribution-NoDerivs license allows for redistribution, commercial and non-commercial, as long as it is passed along unchanged and in whole, with credit to you.

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   Attribution-NonCommercial    CC BY-NC

This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon your work non-commercially, and although their new works must also acknowledge you and be non-commercial, they don’t have to license their derivative works on the same terms.

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   Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike    CC BY-NC-SA

This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon your work non-commercially, as long as they credit you and license their new creations under the identical terms.

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   Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs    CC BY-NC-ND

This license is the most restrictive of our six main licenses, only allowing others to download your works and share them with others as long as they credit you, but they can’t change them in any way or use them commercially.

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Using Google to Locate Creative Commons Images

Google Images, Yahoo Images, and Flickr each have a setting to filter for images with a Creative Commons license. Sometimes, the search engines get the license wrong. Even after locating an image this way, be sure to check the source of the image to verify what restrictions, if any, the creator has placed on its use.

Here are the instructions for filtering for images with Creative Commons licenses in Google Images.

  1. Go to Google Images.
  2. Choose “Tools” (directly below the search bar and towards the middle of the page.)
  3. A second row of settings should appear. Click the dropdown menu on “Usage Rights” (right-most dropdown menu).
  4. Choose the middle option “Creative Commons licenses.”

Google Images with Creative Commons filter