Is it ok to use online figures or videos as a
part ofour courses, studies etc? I have realized that the fact that something
is online does not mean that others can use it. We must always take the creator’s
permission to use or share the digital content. Creative commons (CC) licenses
give the opportunity to the creator to retain copyright while allowing
others use or even modify the content. This is essential for education: sharing
but keeping the credits for our work. What is most important concerning CC is
that the CC licenses are easy to understand and at the same time, they are
robust.

Further, what is interesting for scientists is
that even open-access articles can have CC licenses. Recently, I published a
study in such an open-access journal (Frontiers in Human Neuroscience) and the
study is also under a CC license:

‘Copyright © 2018 Andreou, Comasco, Åslund, Nilsson and Hodgins. This is an
open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted,
provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner are credited and that
the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted
academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does
not comply with these terms’

There are very illustrative infographics showing the different CC licenses.
You can easily find these online. Here I list the main six CC licenses:

‘Attribution is compulsory for all CC licences. In other words you must give appropriate credits’.

Attribution (CC BY): You are free to share
and adapt even commercially

Attribution-NonCommercial: CC BY-NC (The same as
above but not commercially)

Attribution-ShareAlike  (CC BY-SA): You are free to share and adapt, even commercially, but if
you adapt, you must distribute your the product under the same license (CC BY-SA)

Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike (CC BY-NC-SA): The same as above but not commercialy

Attribution-NoDerivs (CC BY-ND): You are free to share ,even
commercially, but not adapt

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs (CC
BY-NC-ND): The same as above but not commercialy

We can search CC licensed digital works in: https://search.creativecommons.org/

And we can create CC licenses here: https://creativecommons.org/choose/

My reflection here is that it is highly important that there is such a smart, open and legally robust way to identify how you can use digital work. It would be impractical if it was necessary to contact the creator every time we need to use/ share the digital work. Our era is the era of information, sharing is caring, sharing is a fundamental principle of education and learning. And CC allow sharing, but they care for both the creator and the user which is fanastic!