Creative Commons licenses give everyone from individual creators to large institutions a standardized way to grant the public permission to use their creative work under copyright law. From the reuser’s perspective, the presence of a Creative Commons license on a copyrighted work answers the question, “What can I do with this work?”
There are four core elements that create the bones of all six Creative Commons Licenses. 
To better understand which license works best for you, it's helpful to understand what each of the components and their functional use is as you consider sharing your work with a broader community.
One condition of all CC licenses is attribution. A good rule of thumb is to use the acronym TASL, which stands for Title, Author, Source, License.
For example, if you were going to use attribution for this guide it would look like: "OER & Creative Commons Guide" by Christine Elliott, Lucas Hall, and Lauren Movlai is licensed under CC BY.
Check out these Best Practices for Attribution for more info.
As you're finding OERs, look for what kind of Creative Commons license is attached, as they will have different sharing and remixing allowances!
The Creative Commons licenses are great tools to communicate the level of freedom users may have when interacting with your published materials. However, it's important to note that there are limitations to when Creative Commons licenses can be applied.
When considering a license, it's important to keep the following points in mind:
It's important to reiterate that Creative Commons licenses ONLY apply to Copyright.
Other rights that could apply to your item need to be managed separately. Examples of these other rights include:
One other important difference about the scope of Creative Commons licenses is that they also cover other rights closely related to copyright. Defined as "Similar Rights" in the Creative Commons legal code, these include related and neighboring rights and sui generis database rights.
Just as with copyright, the Creative Commons license conditions only come into play when Similar Rights otherwise apply to the work and to the particular reuse made by someone using the CC licensed work.
Examples of Similar Rights include:
Unless otherwise specified, the OER & Creative Commons Guide by C. Elliott, Lucas Hall, and Lauren Movlai is licensed under CC BY.
