Primary Investigator:

Giorgos Cheliotis, National University of Singapore

Partnering Organization:

Creative Commons (CC)

Creative Commons (CC) provides free legal and technical tools to help enable the sharing, reusing, and remixing of content. This Small Grant from the SSRC enables Creative Commons, a key player in the global movement for open access, to monitor and analyze the use and growth of CC licenses around the world. 

There are about 50 CC jurisdictions globally, but good estimates of CC license use do not currently exist. Conducting research on the growth and dissemination of these licenses is necessary to understand the larger impact of their cultural and legal innovation. The research partnership between Creative Commons and Professor Giogos Cheliotis (National University of Singapore) enables the organization to better serve the communities that already use CC licenses and to conduct more effective outreach and education to those who would benefit from using them.

The project provides 1) detailed metrics, charts, and plots on every jurisdiction where CC licenses have been introduced; 2) an assessment of the global state of CC licensing (including, among others, plots illustrating differences in adoption per capita across jurisdictions); and 3) a discussion of the future of CC and how it may better serve creators in the digital age. The analyses serve as a catalyst for research on commons-based peer production and associated licensing models and provide practice-relevant outcomes. Coinciding with these efforts, Creative Commons will improve on their existing tools, including the automation of data collection and improved metrics/graph generation. CC will then make these technical tools available under an appropriate open source license, thereby enabling others to utilize them, for free, in conducting their own research.