Creative Commons licenses: moving on to 4.0

The six Creative Commons licenses (CC BY, CC BY-SA, etc.) have gone through several versions: the 1.0 version was drafted in 2002, and operated under US law only. Three versions, some of them ported to national jurisdictions, were released over the years in order to improve the first version and extend its scope until the current 4.0 version.

As of March 2022 the only version that may be implemented on OpenEdition Books and OpenEdition Journals is the 4.0 version of the CC licenses.

Editorial teams and authors may find here a summary of 4.0 main features. The 4.0 version of CC licenses does not downgrade protection offered by previous versions. Therefore any document that has been licensed under an older version (1.0, 2.0, 2.5, 3.0) can safely be switched to 4.0.

The main changes brought by the 4.0 version are:

• its international scope, while taking into account national legal specificities that may prevail over the Creative Commons licenses provisions (e.g. French law prohibits all waiver of moral rights);
• it clarifies points not addressed in previous versions: under 4.0 CC licenses, mentioning the title of the work cited or used is not mandatory, but linking to the page where the work may be found is required.

In order to inform authors of the update, books and journals publishers may sign an addendum with authors when the existing contract mentions an earlier version than 4.0.

For more information on the four versions, please see the “License Versions” page of the Creative Commons Wiki.