Creative Commons (CC) provides free and easy-to-use
copyright licenses giving the public the right to share, use, and even build upon an author’s creative work. The nonprofit organization CC also protects the people who use an author’s work, so they don’t have to worry about copyright infringement, as long as they abide by the specified conditions.
One of the most liberal CC licenses for scientific article publication is the
Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license, as it allows people to adapt and share an author’s work, even for commercial use, as long as the author is correctly attributed. CC BY is the default license at Springer: all articles published in SpringerOpen journals as well as most articles published under the Open Choice program are CC BY licensed.
A limited number of Springer’s open access journals (Pharma related titles and journals published by Adis) as well as SpringerOpen books are published under the
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial (CC BY-NC) license, meaning that the work can be adapted and shared for non-commercial purposes as long as the original author and source are properly attributed.