Openly licensed content

Openly licensed content is material that you can use, share and modify for any purpose without asking for permission. Openly licensed content is usually marked with an open licence, such as a Creative Commons licence, which tells you what you can and cannot do with the content. Openly licensed content can include images, music, video, text, data, and software. 

Using openly licensed content can help your academic research in many ways. For example, you can: 

• Make your presentations, reports, and publications more attractive and diverse with different types of media. 
• Avoid legal problems and costs that might come from using content that is not openly licensed. 
• Support the open access movement and the sharing of knowledge and resources. 
• Add to the creation and improvement of open content by changing and combining existing works. 

Not all content on the internet is openly licensed, so you need to carefully check the licence terms and conditions of any content you want to use. You also need to give proper credit to the original creator and the licence of the content, unless the licence says otherwise. 

Tips for finding openly licensed content

To find openly licensed content, you can use the following tips and resources: 

• Use search engines and databases that only show openly licensed content, such as Openverse and Google Scholar. These tools let you filter your results by license type, format, subject, and other criteria. 
• Use search options on popular websites, such as Google, YouTube, Flickr, and Wikimedia Commons, to limit your results to openly licensed content. Look for the ‘Usage rights’ or ‘License’ option under the ‘Tools’ or ‘Advanced’ menu. 
• How to find Creative Commons videos on YouTube (video)
• Google: search for creative commons licensed images (video) 
• Look for the licence information on the content itself or on the website where you found it. Usually, the license is shown by a logo, a link or a text that tells you the licence name, version and URL.  

If you are not sure about the licence or the terms of use of a content, contact the creator or the owner and ask for permission before using it. 

Useful websites for finding openly licensed content

Here are some examples of websites that offer openly licensed content for different formats and disciplines. You can browse or use their search functions to find content that matches your needs. 

Images

• Nappy: Diverse and inclusive images of Black and Brown people 
• Pexels: High-quality and free stock photos and videos 
• Unsplash: High-quality and free stock photos

Sound effects

• BBC Rewind – Sound Effects: Over 16,000 sound effects from the BBC archive that you can use for non-commercial purposes 
• CCMixter: Music and sound effects that you can use for your films, videos, games, or podcasts 

Videos

• Pixabay: Free stock videos and images that you can use for your projects 
• Mixkit: Free assets for video projects 
• Videvo: Free stock video footage 

How to give credit to openly licensed content

When you use openly licensed content, you need to give proper credit to the original creator and the license of the content, unless the license says otherwise. This is not only a legal requirement, but also a way of showing respect and gratitude to the creator and the open community. 

The best way to give credit to openly licensed content is to follow the [TASL] format, which stands for Title, Author, Source, and License. For example, if you use [this image] in your project, you can give credit as follows: 

[Sigmund Freud] by [One by RM] is licensed under [CC BY 2.0] 

You can also use tools, such as Citation Machine or BibMe, to generate citations for openly licensed content in different styles, such as APA, Harvard or Chicago.