Stanford Digital Repository services
Stanford Digital Repository Services

License options

By assigning a license to your deposited work, you are letting others know what they are allowed to do with your content and under what conditions. You may choose to assign a broad license that allows anyone to do whatever they like with your data, or you may assign a more narrow license that restricts their use to non-commercial activities and prevents the distribution of derivative works.

If you deposit your work into the Stanford Digital Repository, you will have the option to choose any of the licenses below.

Creative Commons Licenses

Creative Commons provides a selection of license options that you can assign to your work, as well as assistance with choosing one of these licenses. Creative Commons also provides guidance on the use of their licenses with data and databases. 

CC0-1.0

Creative Commons Zero v1.0 Universal

When you choose this license, you are waiving all rights and placing your work in the public domain.

CC0
CC-BY-4.0

Creative Commons Attribution v4.0 International

This license allows others to distribute, remix, tweak, and build upon your work, even commercially, as long as the original work is properly attributed to you.

CC BY
CC-BY-SA-4.0

Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike v4.0 International

This license allows others to remix, tweak, and build upon your work, even commercially, as long as the original work is properly attributed to you and they license the derivatives under the identical terms.

CC BY SA
CC-BY-ND-4.0

Creative Commons Attribution No Derivatives v4.0 International

This license allows others to redistribute your work for commercial or non-commercial purposes, as long as it is passed along unchanged and in whole and properly attributed to you.

CC BY ND
CC-BY-NC-4.0

Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial v4.0 International

This license allows others to remix, tweak, and build upon your work non-commercially, as long as the original work is properly attributed to you. Derivative works do not have to be licensed on the same terms as the original.

CC BY NC
CC-BY-NC-SA-4.0

Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share-Alike v4.0 International

This license allows others to remix, tweak, and build upon your work non-commercially, as long as the original work is properly attributed to you and the derivative works are licensed on the same terms as the original.

CC BY NC SA
CC-BY-NC-ND-4.0

Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial No Derivatives v4.0 International

This license allows others to share your work with others as long as they credit you. Your work can not be changed in any way or used commercially. This is the most restrictive Creative Commons license.

CC BY NC ND

Open Data Commons licenses

Open Data Commons (ODC) licenses were created specifically for data and databases. ODC provides information on how these licenses differ from Creative Commons licenses in their application to databases. 

PDDL-1.0

Open Data Commons Public Domain Dedication License v1.0

This license is similar to the CC0 license in that it imposes no restrictions on the use of your data/database. Others are free to copy, distribute, and use your work; produce works from your data/database; and to modify, transform, and build upon the data/database.

PDDL
ODC-By-1.0

Open Data Commons Attribution License v1.0

This license is similar to the CC BY license in that it allows others to copy, distribute, and use your work; produce works from your data/database; and to modify, transform, and build upon the data/database, as long as they provide you proper attribution.

ODC BY
ODbL-1.0

Open Data Commons Open Database License v1.0

This license is similar to the CC BY-SA license in that it allows others to copy, distribute, and use your work; produce works from your data/database; and to modify, transform, and build upon the data/database, as long as they provide you proper attribution and any new works created are made available under this same license.

ODbL

Software licenses

If you are interestesd in an open source software license, choosealicense.com may be of help to you. They also have a comparison chart that includes nearly all of the licenses on this list.

Other options

 

Public Domain Mark 1.0

This option can be used when a work has been identified as being free of known restrictions under copyright law. Only choose this mark when you are absolutely certain the work meets this requirement. Works with this mark can be copied, modified, distributed, and performed without restrictions, including for commercial purposes. 

Public domain

Custom license

This option allows you to write your own terms to govern the reuse of your content. This feature must be turned on by a collection manager, who can decide whether the same custom rights statement will be applied to every item in the collection, or whether a different rights statement can be applied to each item. If you're a collection manager and want to understand how best to implement this feature for your collection, please contact us.

No license

When you deposit content into the SDR, you will also have the option to choose "No License." If you choose this option, no license will be applied to your work and no information regarding licenses will be displayed on your persistent URL (PURL) page. For scholarly works produced at Stanford, we highly recommend that you do not select this option and, instead, choose one of the licenses from the list above.