Understand your publishing contract
Before selecting a CC license, read your publication agreements carefully and understand how a CC license selection might interact with it.
**For an indicator of whether a publisher will be controlling uses and profits from your work, look the prices attached to any APCs (Article Processing Charges):
- Commercial Open Access journals
- often charge higher prices to publish with a CC BY licenses than they’d charge for a more restrictive CC license (such as CC BY-NC or CC BY-NC-ND)
- if the publisher controls the permissions process, they have more potential income streams for licensing
- See the Illusion of Control section for why.
- Non-profit Open Access journals
- are less likely to see a heightened APC charge for more restrictive CC licenses
- If a journal has no intent to profit from future licensing streams from your scholarship, you may note:
- You don't transfer your copyright to the publisher
- You enter into a non-exclusive license to publish (allowing you to enter into other license agreements)
- You'll see contractual terms that clarify that for permission to commercialize or license a work, interested parties should contact the author, rather than the publisher.
