Licensing & Open Scholarship: Creative Commons, Rights, and Sharing Your Research
Offered by: Josh Chalifour, Digital Scholarship Librarian, Concordia Library
- Format: Consultation
- Time: 45 min
- Stage: Developing an Idea, Developing an Idea, Active Research
- Pathway: Academic Scholarship, Communications
- digital
- tools
- literacy
Research agreements and licensing choices often determine how far your work can travel and who can build on it. This activity supports researchers in navigating the implications of author agreements, open access, and sharing decisions so their research remains usable, visible, and impactful over time.
Why this
Consult with a librarian on how to use open licenses in support of your research, collaboration, and impact, especially in a digital context. Selecting open-source, Creative Commons, or other types of licences has important ramifications on the use, reuse, and sharing of creative and research outputs. These licences enable different forms of access and future partnerships. This service will help you understand how to find resources such as images, code, or data that are licensed to align with goals of modifying or reusing work in your projects. This service will also help collaborators define their work with a perspective to the project’s dissemination and preservation at the project’s conclusion.
Relevance for impact
Address a key barrier to research impact: uncertainty around copyright and licensing that limits how research outputs can be shared, reused, and built upon. By building practical understanding of open licenses and ethical reuse, it enables researchers to make informed decisions that support access, collaboration, and long-term preservation. Strengthen conditions for knowledge mobilization, responsible partnership, and downstream impact by ensuring research outputs can travel legally and meaningfully beyond their original context.
Who it’s for
Researchers who work with images, media, code, datasets, creative works, or any materials requiring clear rights and reuse permissions.
What you’ll learn / outcomes
- How licenses and copyright function across the research process
- How licensing choices affect access, collaboration, and long-term preservation
- Social and ethical considerations in using and sharing others’ work
- How to locate and evaluate openly licensed works
Format
- Consultation (45 minutes)
- Virtual (in-person by request)
- Group size: 1 or more participants
- On-demand scheduling
What to bring
- Nothing required
Materials provided
- Guides, evaluation criteria templates, examples of digital scholarship tools, and links to resources.
Service provider
As a Digital Scholarship Librarian with Concordia University, Joshua Chalifour identifies and assesses new possibilities that emerging technologies open for academic work. This involves collaborating in cross-disciplinary research processes, as well as engaging in teaching and learning through digital scholarship initiatives and services. Additionally, Chalifour is the subject librarian for Communication Studies and Journalism.