The Association of Universities in the Netherlands (VSNU), together with the Dutch consortium of university libraries and the National library of The Netherlands (UKB)  and The Dutch Research Council (NWO), has published a handy guide on licensing of scientific publications and teaching materials. This guide is based on earlier work from 2012 and has been updated by a working group to reflect the Dutch situation.

Most publishers will ask you to choose a Creative Commons licence when publishing, for example, a paper. Increasingly, research funders have requirements as to which CC licence has to be applied, to make sure that the research they fund is reused as widely as possible.

But what are these licences exactly and are they different from copyright? Which one to choose for your paper or book and which one for your teaching materials? This (derivative) guide  aims to help researchers answering these and other questions through short clear-cut chapters and frequently asked questions