Open Access, Public Domain, & Creative Commons

Uncertain about a work? Learn about alternative resources that you can use may be uncopyrightable or licensed for open use.

Open Access

During your searches you may also find content that is Open Access (OA), which means that it is free to reuse and often has a open license or Creative Commons license attached to the content. Learn more about K-State Open Access.

Public Domain

Content in the public domain does not have copyright protection. This may be due to its copyright term expiring (after about 95+ years) or because the creator decided to designate public domain early.

Attributing an author of a public domain work is not legally required. But, you can avoid plagarism by citing your sources.

Additionally, view these resources for more help:

• Digital Copyright Slider: will help you determine whether or not a work is in the public domain.
• Copyright Genie: will also help you determine if a work is in the public domain by asking you a series of questions.

Creative Commons

Creative Commons Licensed (CCL) content is openly-licensed directly by the copyright holder to any user, meaning that it has fewer restrictions than other content found online. Creative Commons licenses communicate to online users a works use terms quickly.

The terms of these licenses are less restrictive than current U.S. copyright law. To learn more about the terms of the licenses, check out this infographic.

While copyright law implies that all rights are reserved, CCL notes what rights are reserved for the creator.

• For example, the Creative Commons-Attribution (CC-BY) license requires:
  • attribution/credit to the original creator.
• The Creative Commons-Attribution-ShareAlike (CC-BY-SA) requires:
  • attribution/credit and
  • your work also licensed as CC-BY-SA .

To apply a CC license to your own work you can choose a license directly from creativecommons.org. If you cannot embed the icons, you can also copy/paste the license icon into your webpage or simply link to the license.

Finding Creative Commons Works

• Search.CreativeCommons.org
• Wikimedia Commons
• Google Images
  • First, conduct a basic search; then, under "Tools," select the appropriate "Usage Rights" for your intended use.

Be mindful that occasionally creative commons content may be mislabled. Google's reverse image search can be helpful in determining the origination of the image and the current copyright status.

To conduct a reverse image search:

• Go to Google Images,
• Click on the camera icon,
• Upload the image or copy/paste the URL of your image.