Some Open Access advocates opt for permissive licensing of scientific works, in particular for the use of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) license. It allows republishing, translations and modifications, regardless of its purpose and without prior permission of the author. However, the work must be properly attributed. CC-BY is also mandated by some Open Access funders, such as the Wellcome Trust. Thus, some authors are obligated by funders to publish under the terms of this license.

However, several Open Access publishers, including De Gruyter Open, use as default more restrictive licenses like Creative Common Attribution Non Commercial No Derivatives. This license allows republishing, but only for non-commercial goals (like teaching or critical descriptions) and does not allow the publication of modified works (such as translations) without prior permission of the copyrights holder.

Z: Do researchers prefer more or less restrictive Creative Commons licenses? | Open Science.