Public Domain, Open Access & Creative Commons

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Public Domain

Uncopyrighted works are considered to be in the public domain and can be fully used by anyone without permission.

The question is, which kinds of intellectual property are uncopyrighted? In the US, this list includes the following:

  • Works for which copyright has expired
  • Common idioms of the English language (though these may be protected by trademark law)
  • Facts, theories, and ideas (though the tangible expressions of these could be copyrighted)
  • US government works, including laws, speeches made by federal employees, and publications

Again, even though you may have permission to use information in the public domain without asking for permission to do so, you must always cite other authors whose works you use to support your own.

Open Access & Creative Commons

Open Access is a movement that works within the boundaries of copyright law to allow unrestricted access and reuse of copyrighted works. Open Access gives more freedom to authors to share their research with others, making information accessible without the fees that come with traditional publishing models. 

Watch the following video from PhD Comics to find out more about open access. 

Universities and other academic and research organizations are increasingly creating and maintaining open-access institutional repositories to collect and archive researchers' papers, data, and learning objects. This not only backs up researchers' information, but also makes it available for other researchers to use and cite in their own works. 

Open-access authors and publishers make content freely available online, releasing content under a Creative Commons license. This allows content creators to license their works so that other people can reuse them, while retaining their copyrights. Depending on the license chosen, others may use all or some of the work, may "remix" it to make a new product, or may be able to use it for commercial as well as educational purposes.

 

These modules, for example, are published in the Canvas Commons under a Noncommercial, Attribution, ShareALike license. This means your professor and others can use any of the material as long as they credit the creator, do not use the materials for profit, and share content under the same license. 

Creative Commons licenses give creators more freedom to share their works than traditional copyright, and give users, including you, the freedom to reuse them ethically.