Authors' Licensing

Authors publishing in Theoretical and Natural Science (TNS) retain copyright in their article and publish it under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license. We work with our authors to make sure that they understand their rights and responsibilities when they publish in Theoretical and Natural Science (TNS). Information about the Open Access terms in place for Theoretical and Natural Science (TNS) can be found here.

What is Creative Commons licensing?

Creative Commons is a non-profit organization that has released several copyright licenses known as Creative Commons licenses free of charge to the public. The licenses grant rights to the users of the content but do not replace the copyright, which remains with the copyright owner. EWA Publishing generally publishes open access articles under a CC BY 4.0 license. This license lets others distribute, remix, tweak, and build upon the author's work, even commercially, as long as they credit the author for the original creation.

The majority of open access articles published by EWA Publishing are now done so under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license. This license allows the author(s) of a work to maintain the sole right to be credited and cited as authors of the work and for everyone (including the authors) to have the rights to distribute, adapt and build upon the work. Further information about the CC BY license is provided below.

There are a number of different types of Creative Commons licenses. These open access licenses remove some of the restrictions applied by copyright law, so that content published under them may be used without permission under certain conditions. These conditions are indicated by initials in the license titles:

BY – reuse is only allowed if the original work is appropriately credited
NC – reuse is only allowed for non-commercial purposes
ND – reuse is only allowed of the work in its entirety – no portions or edits
SA – reuse is only allowed if the new work is made available under the same license as the original

There are six main types of Creative Commons licenses. The list below sets out whether you need to obtain permission to reuse work published under any of these licenses.

EWA Publishing's articles published under the gold open access model are currently published under a CC BY license.

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Please note that a full citation, including the license under which the content was originally published (and a link to that license) must be included whether or not permission is required.

Can I reuse without permission?

CC BY – This license lets others distribute, remix, tweak, and build upon your work, even commercially, as long as they credit you for the original creation
- Yes, you can reuse it without permission
CC BY-SA – This license lets others remix, tweak and build upon your work even for commercial purposes, as long as they credit you and license their new creations under the identical terms
- Yes, provided the content is then made available under the same license
CC BY-NC – This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon your work non-commercially, and although their new works must also acknowledge you and be non-commercial, they don't have to license their derivative works on the same terms
- Yes, for non-commercial use
- No for commercial use (including publishing in journals/ebooks)
CC BY-ND – This license allows for redistribution, commercial and non-commercial, as long as it is passed along unchanged and in whole, with credit to you
- Yes, provided it is the entire work that is reproduced
CC BY-NC-SA – This license lets others remix, tweak and build upon your work non-commercially, as long as they credit you and license their new creations under the identical terms
- Yes, for non-commercial use, provided the content is then made available under the same license
- No for commercial use (including publishing in journals/ebooks)
CC BY-NC-SD – This license only allows others to download your works and share them with others as long as they credit you, but they can't change them in any way or use them commercially
- Yes, for non-commercial use, provided it is the entire work that is reproduced
- No for commercial use (including publishing in journals/ebooks)

Authors' Licensing