Open access policy

Author licensing

Authors who publish in Communications in Humanities Research (CHR) retain copyright of their articles and grant publication under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY license) license. We actively assist our authors in understanding their rights and responsibilities under this agreement. Further information regarding the open access terms applicable to CHR is available here.

Creative commons

Understanding Creative Commons

Creative Commons is a global nonprofit organization that provides free copyright licenses to the public, facilitating the legal sharing and use of creative works. EWA Publishing predominantly utilizes the CC BY 4.0 license (CC BY 4.0 license), which permits others to distribute, modify, and build upon an author's work, even for commercial purposes, as long as the original author is credited for their creation.

The variety of Creative Commons licenses allows authors to specify the conditions under which their work can be used. These conditions are denoted by acronyms in the license titles, such as BY (attribution required), NC (non-commercial use only), ND (no derivatives or modifications allowed), and SA (derivatives must be shared under the same terms).

EWA Publishing's articles are primarily published under the CC BY license, reflecting our endorsement of maximal openness in academic publishing. A complete citation of the original work, including its Creative Commons license, must accompany any reuse of content, whether permission is needed or not.

The majority of open access articles published by EWA Publishing are now done so under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license. This license allows the author(s) of a work to maintain the sole right to be credited and cited as authors of the work and for everyone (including the authors) to have the rights to distribute, adapt and build upon the work. Further information about the CC BY license is provided below.

There are a number of different types of Creative Commons licenses. These open access licenses remove some of the restrictions applied by copyright law, so that content published under them may be used without permission under certain conditions. These conditions are indicated by initials in the license titles:

  • BY – reuse is only allowed if the original work is appropriately credited
  • NC – reuse is only allowed for non-commercial purposes
  • ND – reuse is only allowed of the work in its entirety – no portions or edits
  • SA – reuse is only allowed if the new work is made available under the same license as the original

There are six main types of Creative Commons licenses. The list below sets out whether you need to obtain permission to reuse work published under any of these licenses.

EWA Publishing's articles published under the gold open access model are currently published under a CC BY license.

Please note that a full citation, including the license under which the content was originally published (and a link to that license) must be included whether or not permission is required.

Can I reuse it without permission?

  • CC BY – This license lets others distribute, remix, tweak, and build upon your work, even commercially, as long as they credit you for the original creation

    Yes, you can reuse it without permission

  • CC BY-SA – This license lets others remix, tweak and build upon your work even for commercial purposes, as long as they credit you and license their new creations under the identical terms

    Yes, provided the content is then made available under the same license

  • CC BY-NC – This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon your work non-commercially, and although their new works must also acknowledge you and be non-commercial, they don't have to license their derivative works on the same terms

    Yes, for non-commercial use

    No for commercial use (including publishing in journals/ebooks)

  • CC BY-ND – This license allows for redistribution, commercial and non-commercial, as long as it is passed along unchanged and in whole, with credit to you

    Yes, provided it is the entire work that is reproduced

  • CC BY-NC-SA – This license lets others remix, tweak and build upon your work non-commercially, as long as they credit you and license their new creations under the identical terms

    Yes, for non-commercial use, provided the content is then made available under the same license

    No for commercial use (including publishing in journals/ebooks)

  • CC BY-NC-SD – This license only allows others to download your works and share them with others as long as they credit you, but they can't change them in any way or use them commercially

    Yes, for non-commercial use, provided it is the entire work that is reproduced

    No for commercial use (including publishing in journals/ebooks)