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Creative Commons & Openly Licensed Content

This guide provides resources for finding content that is creative commons, public domain, or otherwise openly licensed.

Find Open Access Research

There are numerous scholarly journals and research studies that are published as "open access" which is similar to creative commons for scholarly content. Open access research might have the more restrictive cc licenses applied, so be sure to check which license the work is under and use the content appropriately. For example, if a research study is CC-BY-ND, you cannot excerpt or make changes to the article but need to use it in its entirety.

DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals
Similar to searching a library database for scholarly journal articles, but all of the journals listed are open access.
NIH Research Resources
Links to research from the National Institutes of Health.

Open Data

NYC Open Data
Free public data published by New York City agencies and other partners
Data.gov
Raw data used by government agencies and offices for their own research.
NIH Data Repositories
Open data from the National Institutes of Health
PLOS Journals
Peer reviewed open access journals in several disciplines.

Find Open Textbooks

For reusable educational content, you may want to search for an open textbook relevant to your topic.

Open Textbook Library
Created by the University of Minnesota to support development of high-quality open textbooks in various subjects.
LibreTexts
Multi-institutional repository via California State Univ. and MERLOT for OER web-based collections
Intech
Open access book publisher in science, technology and medicine.

Find Other Open Educational Resources

Open Educational Resources (OER) are materials that are created for learning environments and openly licensed. Like open textbooks, if you need educational material, you may want to search for a relevant OER from one of these repositories.

TED: Ideas Worth Spreading
Hippocampus
Hippocampus is a library containing more than 7,000 free videos, animations, and simulations in 13 subject areas.
Licensed for personal, educational and non-commercial purposes.
National Archives
The United States National Archives acts as the nation's record keeper, keeping important legal or historical documents and materials for preservation. Most of the documents and images contained within the archive, unless otherwise noted, are in the public domain.
OER Commons
A collection of various open resources, including textbooks, lesson plans, assessments, simulations, diagrams, and more. Use the advanced search for targeted results for your needs.