Library Subject Guides
Creative Commons public domain tools allow you to identify a work as being free from any known copyright restrictions. There are two tools available: No Rights Reserved (CC0) and the Public Domain Mark.
Researchers do not usually apply No Rights Reserved (CC0) to publications as they still wish to receive credit and retain copyright ownership of such work. You may however consider applying CC0 to your research data in order to maximise its potential for reuse, or the Public Domain Mark if your dataset is not sufficiently 'original' to warrant copyright or database rights protection. Our Research Data Management Practical Guide provides further advice on licensing considerations for data.
In some jurisdictions the moral rights of the creator may persist in public domain works, so there is still a legal expectation that users provide attribution and do not treat the work in a derogatory way. It's therefore considered good practice to provide full acknowledgement when reusing works from the public domain.
No Rights Reserved (CC0) No Rights Reserved (CC0) enables creators of copyright-protected content to waive those interests in their work, thereby placing them as in the public domain to be reused by others for any purposes without legal restriction.
Adapted from Creative Commons CC0 "No Rights Reserved", licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution International licence (CC BY 4.0)
Public Domain MarkThe Public Domain Mark allows anyone to identify pre-existing content as being free of known copyright restrictions, including all related and neighbouring rights. Note that rules governing copyright duration vary between jurisdictions, so some works may not be in the public domain in all countries.
Adapted from Creative Commons - Public Domain Mark 1.0, licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution International licence (CC BY 4.0)
Except where stated, this LibGuide is © University of York and under a Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial ShareAlike International licence (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0). Creative Commons logos, licence buttons and icons are used throughout this guide in accordance with the Creative Commons Trademark Policy. Other generic icons in this guide are used in accordance with the Pixabay licence