When publishing your work open access, you may think you are protecting your publication by choosing an open access licence that prohibits commercial reuse or prevents the creating of other versions of your work (derivatives). You do this by selecting a non-commercial (NC) and/or no derivatives (ND) Creative Commons (CC) licence. However, when selecting a licence with an NC and/or ND restriction when signing a “Licence to Publish agreement” with the publisher, authors may unknowingly transfer some rights exclusively to their publisher. The transfer of the right to make decisions on commercial reuse and/or the creation of derivatives (including selling these rights to third parties for a profit) is stated in the “Licence to Publish agreement”, but not all publishers communicate this clearly to authors.

How does this work?

When publishing a publication in open access, the author has a choice of which CC licence to apply to their publication. When an author chooses a CC BY licence all end users, including the publisher, may re-use the work in any (commercial and non-commercial) way and make derivatives. So, the publisher does not need to claim any of these rights for themselves, because they have these rights anyway, just as all (other) end-users. When an author opts for a CC BY NC-ND license, the commercial and derivative rights are not available to end-users. But publishers may want to get these rights, because they can create extra revenue streams based on these rights. In these cases, the publisher will state in the “Licence to Publish agreement” that, when opting for a CC BY-NC, CC BY-ND or CC BY-NC-ND license, the commercial and/or derivative rights are transferred from the author to the publisher. The publisher refers to this as “obtaining the exclusive rights” and/or as “managing these rights”. In effect, it is a transfer of copyright from the author to the publisher. In most cases, this escapes the notice of the author, who thinks that the commercial and derivative rights remain with them.

What is the best licence to choose for an open access article?

Licences cannot be changed once the article is published, so it’s important to choose the right license beforehand. First of all, check if the article is subject to specific funder requirements. For example, for Horizon Europe- and NWO-funded projects it is mandatory to apply a CC BY license to articles in order to ensure maximum reuse for the publication. A CC BY licence allows all types of reuse with the requirement that the original work and authors are given credit. We recommend selecting a CC BY licence because it facilitates the widest form of reuse while the authors retain most of their rights instead of assigning these to a publisher.

What alternatives do you have?

It is important to consider whether a non-commercial or non-derivative licence is the best way or really necessary to protect the contents of your article. If you really want to protect this content and if it concerns a model, an image, or data, we recommend to follow the steps below. In this way, the right to commercially reuse the object and make derivatives remains with the author.

STEP 1: Determine the object you want to protect.

STEP 2: Deposit the object in a trusted repository before publication and apply the most appropriate Creative Commons license, depending on your needs. Clearly state your name and contact details so anyone wanting to obtain the object for commercial or derivative reuse may contact you. This way you are in control!

STEP 3: Publish the article under a CC BY license and in the article make reference to the object, its licence and where it can be found.

Good research data repositories such as 4TU.ResearchData, the DANS Data Stations, and the Leiden University DataverseNL instance (for data) or generic repositories like Zenodo do not take over control of the licence from the depositor. Authors retain the rights and permissions to reuse and redistribute their data, images, models, or other objects. Once the object is safely deposited and appropriately licensed, authors can proceed to publish the article containing these objects under a CC BY license. This will enable the text of the article to be widely reused, while the object will be protected from unauthorised commercial reuse and derivatives.

Editor's note: this blog was updated on 21 October 2025 to clarify content.

This blog was reviewed and edited by Tessa de Roo and Pascal Flohr.

Banner image by Pixabay/congerdesign, pixabay.comuserscongerdesign-509903. Image in text by Wikimedia Commons / Shaddim.