Copyright:Support Guides/Image Sources Citation Guide/Creative Commons Images

Creative Commons Images

Creative Commons licenses are a suite of different licenses that facilitate the sharing and reuse of information and creative works. There are many different Creative Commons licenses and each allows the work to be shared and reused in different ways. Not all images available under Creative Commons licenses are available for all uses. For more information on Creative Commons licenses please visit the Creative Commons Wiki FAQ page or University of Leicester Library's Presentation: Getting unCommonlyCreative: Reusing and creating open materials

All Creative Commons (CC) licences require the image user to attribute the creator of the image, but how that attribution can be provided is flexible depending on the type of licence and the medium in which the image is being used. Depending on where the image will be used different citation formats are necessary to convey all the required information. In an online environment hyperlinks can be used to minimize the length of the image citation; in a print resource the citation will be longer because all the required information must be written out in full.

All CC attributions should have the same basic information:

• Title of image
• Creator name
• Source of the image (usually in the form of a URL to image source page)
• Any copyright information included with image (such as a watermark)
• CC licence information (including link back to CC documentation page if possible)

For a detailed guide to attributing creative commons material see: Attributing Creative Commons Materials created by CCI and Creative Commons Australia. For information on indicating third party content in CC materials, see Smartcopying's guide: How to Label Third Party Content in Creative Commons Licensed Material.

Examples

Example Image	Details
	Title: Castle Stalker Creator: Andrea Mucelli (username bluestardrop) Source: Flickr, http://www.flickr.com/photos/bluestardrop/3859908007/ Copyright information: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)
	Short, hyperlinked attribution statement. Castle Stalker (c)Andrea Mucelli, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0
	Full, hyperlinked attribution statement. Castle Stalker (c)Andrea Mucelli, used under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic
Castle Stalker (c)Andrea Mucelli (http://www.flickr.com/photos/bluestardrop/3859908007/ ). CC BY-NC-SA 2.0	Short, text only attribution statement. Castle Stalker (c)Andrea Mucelli (http://www.flickr.com/photos/bluestardrop/3859908007/ ). CC BY-NC-SA 2.0
	Full, text only attribution statement. Castle Stalker by Andrea Mucelli, retrieved from http://www.flickr.com/photos/bluestardrop/3859908007/ Used under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/)