Science

As every researcher knows, science thrives in an environment of open and free exchange. To this end, Creative Commons is working with institutions and publishers to open scientific research for common use.

While much academic research still lives behind pay-walls, many researchers have decided to publish their research in open access journals, often under Creative Commons licences. At present, 10% of the world’s entire output of scholarly journals is licensed as Creative Commons.

Many institutions have policies encouraging open access publication, including Harvard, Otago Polytechnic, University of California San Francisco, Queensland Institution of Technology and MIT.

Creative Commons licences are also being used to make scientific data freely available, especially in the public sector. Governments in Australia, UK, USA and Aotearoa New Zealand are using Creative Commons licences to open government data and research for public use.

Below are some examples of how Creative Commons licences are being used by individuals and institutions in Aotearoa New Zealand.

Koordinates

Koordinates is a New Zealand based company that provides platforms for hosting and viewing geographic datasets. Many of the dataset Koordinates uses are provided for public reuse by state agencies under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 New Zealand licence, following the NZGOAL framework. Koordinates actively encourages its providers to consider Creative Commons licences as part of their publishing practices.

Sciblogs

SciBlogs is a network of blogs written by scientists and science-writers, covering everything from agriculture and technology to health and medicine. SciBlogs encourages its writers to makes their content available under Creative Commons Aotearoa New Zealand licences. SciBlogs is New Zealand’s largest network of science blogs

100 Companies

Winner of the Supreme Data Mashup award at the 2011 Mix & Mash, 100 companies uses public data from Statistics New Zealand to visualise potential changes to New Zealand’s economic output. This tool, created by Alex Gibson and Graham Jenson, is intended to contribute to current debates in public policy, and is made available under Creative Commons licences.

Open Access and Open Data

Creative Commons is directly involved in the movement for open access to scientific research. Creative Commons licences are used by the world’s largest open access scholarly publishers. For more information, visit:

• Creative Commons International’s science portal, Science Commons
• Information about Creative Commons licences and data
• Find out about the Scholar’s Copyright Project