The following info was prepared by the DEAL consortium (https://deal-konsortium.de/en/why-ccby) and is intended to help clarify why CC BY is the best choice for your open access license.
This is why CC BY is the best choice
Legal clarity
CC BY provides clear and straightforward terms, reducing legal uncertainties and ensuring your work can be freely used and shared across various platforms and by diverse audiences.
Maximized reuse and dissemination
CC BY allows others to distribute, remix, adapt, and build upon your work, even commercially, as long as they credit you. This maximizes the reach and impact of your research.
Equal commercial use for all
Yes, CC BY does allow for commercial use, but it does so equally for everyone. And given that non-commercial is often interpreted extremely narrow, to the extent that posting a NC-licensed article on a website with advertising can be considered a breach of the NC license terms, it is important to allow it. While this might initially seem daunting, it actually serves as the best protection against exploitation by individual players. When everyone has the same rights to use your work commercially, it prevents any single entity from monopolizing or unfairly profiting from it—addressing current concerns, such as those related to AI.
Alignment with key open-access statements
CC BY steht im Einklang mit den wichtigsten Open-Access-Erklärungen, wie der Berliner Erklärung über offenen Zugang. Sie ist auch die bevorzugte Lizenz vieler Forschungsförderer und -organisationen weltweit.
The Problem with „NC” - Non-commercial
Legal uncertainty
The definition of "non-commercial" is ambiguous under German law. This leads to considerable legal uncertainty as to whether the respective use is permitted. Very often, uses are excluded that the author does not actually want to prevent. For example, it is unclear whether and in which cases NC material can be used in collaborative projects between public and private research institutions. Use by freelance professionals such as doctors, lawyers, architects or even independent research by individuals is clearly not permitted if it serves commercial purposes. In light of these considerations, it becomes evident that NC licenses impede a multitude of desirable uses, thereby contradicting the fundamental tenet of open access.
Exclusive commercial rights to publishers
While choosing a "non-commercial" license type excludes commercial uses, publishers usually require you to assign those reserved commercial rights to them. Unfortunately, many publishers typically claim these rights exclusively, limiting your control over your own work.
Commercial exploitation by publishers
Once publishers hold (exclusive) commercial rights, they can commercialize your research, including licensing it to AI companies or other commercial entities (including for commercial use), without your consent and without any revenue sharing.
Not compatibile with open access definitions
NC licensed material is not “Open Access” per definition. The “Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities” requires Open Access works to be licensed “for any responsible purpose”. Commercial use of research is, obviously, a reasonable purpose in this regard.
