Providing attribution is a requirement of the licensing when using materials openly licensed with Creative Commons licenses.
To provide proper attribution include:
1. Title - the title is required of all licenses 3.0 and prior. While the title in optional for 4.0, it is still good practice to include the title when possible.
2. Author/Creator - give credit to the creator/author. If the creator wants to give credit to another entity, do as requested. The creator can also request his/her name be removed from a derivative.
3. Source - provide the URL link to the source.
4. License - provide the specific license and a link to the license deed. For printed material, spell the url address out so it can be located. If the original material comes with any copyright notice, include it in your attribution. If you modify the content or create a derivative, indicate this. If multiple sources are used, clearly indicate the sources and provide attribution for each. -See: Best practices for attribution.
The CC Wiki provides this example:
This is an ideal attribution
"Creative Commons 10th Birthday Celebration San Francisco" by tvol is licensed under CC BY 2.0
Because:
Title? "Creative Commons 10th Birthday Celebration San Francisco"
Author? "tvol" - linked to his profile page
Source? "Creative Commons 10th Birthday Celebration San Francisco" - linked to original Flickr page
License? "CC BY 2.0" - linked to license deed
-Material from "Best practices for attribution" by CC Wiki is licensed under CC BY 4.0
"There is no one right way, just make sure your attribution is reasonable and suited to the medium you're working with." -From: Don't make it too complicated.
There is flexibility in how to present the attribution as long as the required information is included.
Example variations:
Magnolia Warbler by Stan Lupo licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0
Magnolia Warbler at https://www.flickr.com/photos/stanlupophotography/47112270774/ by Stan Lupo is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/
Magnolia Warbler by Stan Lupo 
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic License.
Magnolia Warbler by Stan Lupo is licensed under 
Try the Open Attribution Builder tool from Open Washington to help build and generate attributions.
Creative Commons is a free licensing system that allows the author of a work to specify legal permissions for how the work may be used others, while retaining full copyright to it themselves. Creative Commons licenses are not an alternative to copyright. They sit on the shoulders of copyright law, and allow authors to easily modify copyright terms to encourage collaboration and sharing.
CC licenses have three layers. This design makes the licenses more robust and compatible with a larger range of uses: by legal courts, by the average person, and by computers.
1) The foundation layer for a CC license is its legal code layer. This layer contains the legal terms and conditions for the different licenses. It is the layer that links the CC license to copyright laws and makes the CC license legally enforceable worldwide.
2) The second layer, referred to as the common deeds layer, breaks the licenses down into more easily understood terms and images, making the licenses more accessible to the people using them.
3) The final layer is the machine readable version of the license, designed for use by computers. For example, this layer allows search engines to identify CC licenses in a website’s
"What are Creative Commons Licenses?" University of Guelph McLaughlin Library. https://youtu.be/srVPLrmlBJY
Application of CC licenses is a two-step process.
CC licenses include four license elements that allow authors to grant or restrict permissions for use. For ease of use, they are represented by icons.
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Attribution (BY) - Users must give credit to the licenser/author. |
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NonCommercial (NC) - Users cannot use the work for commercial purposes. |
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No Derivative Works (ND) - Users cannot share adaptations of the work. |
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Share Alike (SA) - Users must license adaptations of the work under the same CC license. |
The four license elements can be combined into six different Creative Commons Licenses. Select
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Attribution only. |
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Attribution - Non-Commercial |
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Attribution - No Derivatives |
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Attribution - Share Alike |
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Attribution - Non-Commercial - No Derivatives |
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Attribtuion - Non-Commercial - Share Alike |
CC has created two tools for use with items within the public domain.
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The CCO icon indicates that the author has dedicated a work to the public domain. |
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The Public Domain icon is for informative use only. It indicates that a work is within the public domain. However, it is not a legally enforceable designation. |
CC licenses work within copyright laws. They do not limit use beyond copyright. This means that anything that is within the public domain cannot be placed under a CC license. It also means that all fair use and other exceptions to copyright restrictions still apply. For example, CC licenses will not enable creators to restrict users from lending or reselling a work. Those are fair use exceptions under copyright law that also apply to CC licenses.
"CC Licenses" is a derivative of the September 2019 Creative Commons Certificate Course by Creative Commons, licensed CC BY 4.0. Jean Shumway adapted content .
This work is licensed under CC By license.