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Choosing a license
<!DOCTYPE html> <html lang="en"> <head> <meta charset="utf-8"> <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1, shrink-to-fit=no"> <link href="/css/dist/css/bootstrap.min.css" rel="stylesheet"> <title>Choosing a license</title> <link rel="stylesheet" href="/css/eprint.css?v=10"> <link rel="shortcut icon" href="/favicon.ico" type="image/x-icon" /> <link rel="apple-touch-icon" href="/img/apple-touch-icon-180x180.png" /> </head> <body> <noscript> <h1 class="text-center">What a lovely hat</h1> <h4 class="text-center">Is it made out of <a href="https://iacr.org/tinfoil.html">tin foil</a>?</h4> </noscript> <div class="fixed-top" id="topNavbar"> <nav class="navbar navbar-custom navbar-expand-lg"> <div class="container px-0 justify-content-between justify-content-lg-evenly"> <div class="order-0 align-items-center d-flex"> <button class="navbar-toggler btnNoOutline" type="button" data-bs-toggle="collapse" data-bs-target="#navbarContent" aria-controls="navbarContent" aria-expanded="false"> <span class="icon-bar top-bar"></span> <span class="icon-bar middle-bar"></span> <span class="icon-bar bottom-bar"></span> </button> <a class="d-none me-5 d-lg-inline" href="https://iacr.org/"><img class="iacrlogo" src="/img/iacrlogo_small.png" alt="IACR Logo" style="max-width:6rem;"></a> </div> <a class="ePrintname order-1" href="/"> <span class="longNavName">Cryptology ePrint Archive</span> </a> <div class="collapse navbar-collapse order-3" id="navbarContent"> <ul class="navbar-nav me-auto ms-2 mb-2 mb-lg-0 justify-content-end w-100"> <li class="ps-md-3 nav-item dropdown"> <a class="nav-link dropdown-toggle" href="#" id="navbarDropdown" role="button" data-bs-toggle="dropdown" aria-expanded="false"> Papers </a> <ul class="dropdown-menu me-3" aria-labelledby="navbarDropdown"> <span class="text-dark mx-3" style="white-space:nowrap;">Updates from the last:</span> <li><a class="dropdown-item ps-custom" href="/days/7">7 days</a></li> <li><a class="dropdown-item ps-custom" href="/days/31">31 days</a></li> <li><a class="dropdown-item ps-custom" href="/days/183">6 months</a></li> <li><a class="dropdown-item ps-custom" href="/days/365">365 days</a></li> <li><hr class="dropdown-divider"></li> <li><a class="dropdown-item" href="/byyear">Listing by year</a></li> <li><a class="dropdown-item" href="/complete">All papers</a></li> <li><a class="dropdown-item" href="/complete/compact">Compact view</a></li> <li><a class="dropdown-item" href="https://www.iacr.org/news/subscribe">Subscribe</a></li> <li><hr class="dropdown-divider"></li> <li><a class="dropdown-item" href="/citation.html">How to cite</a></li> <li><hr class="dropdown-divider"></li> <li><a class="dropdown-item" href="/rss">Harvesting metadata</a></li> </ul> </li> <li class="ps-md-3 nav-item dropdown"> <a class="nav-link dropdown-toggle" href="#" id="submissionsDropdown" role="button" data-bs-toggle="dropdown" aria-expanded="false"> Submissions </a> <ul class="dropdown-menu me-3" aria-labelledby="submissionsDropdown"> <li><a class="dropdown-item" href="/submit">Submit a paper</a></li> <li><a class="dropdown-item" href="/revise">Revise or withdraw a paper</a></li> <li><a class="dropdown-item" href="/operations.html">Acceptance and publishing conditions</a></li> </ul> </li> <li class="ps-md-3 nav-item dropdown"> <a class="nav-link dropdown-toggle" href="#" id="aboutDropdown" role="button" data-bs-toggle="dropdown" aria-expanded="false"> About </a> <ul class="dropdown-menu me-3" aria-labelledby="aboutDropdown"> <li><a class="dropdown-item" href="/about.html">Goals and history</a></li> <li><a class="dropdown-item" href="/news.html">News</a></li> <li><a class="dropdown-item" href="/stats">Statistics</a></li> <li><a class="dropdown-item" href="/contact.html">Contact</a></li> </ul> </li> </ul> </div> <div class="dropdown ps-md-2 text-right order-2 order-lg-last"> <button class="btn btnNoOutline" type="button" id="dropdownMenuButton1" data-bs-toggle="dropdown" aria-expanded="false"> <img src="/img/search.svg" class="searchIcon" alt="Search Button"/> </button> <div id="searchDd" class="dropdown-menu dropdown-menu-end p-0" aria-labelledby="dropdownMenuButton1"> <form action="/search" method="GET"> <div class="input-group"> <input id="searchbox" name="q" type="search" class="form-control" autocomplete="off"> <button class="btn btn-secondary border input-group-append ml-2"> Search </button> </div> </form> <div class="ms-2 p-1 d-none"><a href="/search">Advanced search</a></div> </div> </div> </div> </nav> </div> <main id="eprintContent" class="container px-3 py-4 p-md-4"> <h2 class="mt-2 mb-5">Licenses</h2> <p class="alert alert-secondary"> <strong>NOTE</strong>: the license policy was changed in 2022 to make license assignment more explicit and flexible. We now require the license to be explicitly chosen at submission time. Prior to this, new submissions were submitted under a CC BY license, but authors were allowed to specify a CC BY-NC license in a footnote on their PDF. </p> <p> The Cryptology ePrint Archive requires a license in order to publish a paper. The granting of a license allows IACR to distribute your work, but does not require copyright assignment. Once this license is assigned, it cannot be changed. By submitting to the Cryptology ePrint Archive, the author must specify a license and certify that they have the right to grant that license. </p> <p> There are several factors that may guide your choice of a license: </p> <ul class="dashList"> <li> If you intend to publish elsewhere, the publisher may require a specific license on other versions. This can apply to both publications behind a paywall and open access publications. Some publishers simply require you to list the DOI on the Cryptology ePrint Archive once it is assigned. Other publishers may require you to wait until an embargo period expires before posting on a preprint server. It is your responsibility to check your publisher's requirements <em>before</em> posting your paper on the Cryptology ePrint Archive. </li> <li> Your funding agency/agencies may require a specific type of license. Each funding agency is different, and some like <a href="https://www.coalition-s.org/" target="_blank">Coalition S</a> or <a href="https://ec.europa.eu/info/research-and-innovation/funding/funding-opportunities/funding-programmes-and-open-calls/horizon-europe_en" target="_blank">Horizon Europe</a> from the European Research Council require specific licenses. Check your grant agreements before submitting to the Cryptology ePrint Archive. </li> <li> Your employer may require a specific license. </li> <li> You may wish to impose restrictions on what can be done with your paper. We believe that the primary goal of scientific publication should be dissemination of information without restrictions beyond attribution. </li> </ul> <p class="mb-0"> IACR accepts the following licenses: </p> <div class="row"> <div class="col-6 col-md-4 col-lg-3 text-center px-4 py-3 my-3"> <img src="/img/license/CC_BY.svg" class="img-fluid licenseImg" alt=""> <h5 class="mb-0"> CC BY </h5> <small> <a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/" target="_blank">Creative Commons Attribution</a> </small> </div> <div class="col-6 col-md-4 col-lg-3 text-center px-4 py-3 my-3"> <img src="/img/license/CC_BY_SA.svg" class="img-fluid licenseImg" alt=""> <h5 class="mb-0"> CC BY-SA </h5> <small> <a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" target="_blank">Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike</a> </small> </div> <div class="col-6 col-md-4 col-lg-3 text-center px-4 py-3 my-3"> <img src="/img/license/CC_BY_NC.svg" class="img-fluid licenseImg" alt=""> <h5 class="mb-0"> CC BY-NC </h5> <small> <a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/" target="_blank">Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial</a> </small> </div> <div class="col-6 col-md-4 col-lg-3 text-center px-4 py-3 my-3"> <img src="/img/license/CC_BY_NC_SA.svg" class="img-fluid licenseImg" alt=""> <h5 class="mb-0"> CC BY-NC-SA </h5> <small> <a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/" target="_blank">Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike</a> </small> </div> <div class="col-6 col-md-4 col-lg-3 text-center px-4 py-3 my-3"> <img src="/img/license/CC_BY_NC_ND.svg" class="img-fluid licenseImg" alt=""> <h5 class="mb-0"> CC BY-NC-ND </h5> <small> <a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/" target="_blank">Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs</a> </small> </div> <div class="col-6 col-md-4 col-lg-3 text-center px-4 py-3 my-3"> <img src="/img/license/CC0.svg" class="img-fluid licenseImg" alt=""> <h5 class="mb-0"> CC0 </h5> <small> <a href="https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/" target="_blank">No rights reserved</a> </small> </div> </div> <h3 class="mt-4">Creative Commons licenses</h3> <p> Creative Commons licenses are the most common. Creative Commons offers a <a href="https://creativecommons.org/choose/" target="_blank">license customizer</a>, as well as <a href="https://creativecommons.org/about/cclicenses/" target="_blank">more in-depth descriptions of the available licenses</a>. We support a number of license types, which are listed above. </p> <h4 class="mt-4"> License Features </h4> <dl class="row"> <dt class="col-md-3">Attribution</dt> <dd class="col-md-9">The primary purpose of publishing is to receive attribution for your ideas, and for this reason most Creative Commons licenses incorporate this feature to require attribution. </dd> <dt class="col-md-3">Share-Alike</dt> <dd class="col-md-9">A share-alike license requires that any adaptations of your work be shared using the same license. </dd> <dt class="col-md-3">Non-Commercial</dt> <dd class="col-md-9">The NC feature requires that adaptations of your work can only be used for non-commercial purposes. Note that some commercial purposes may be to your benefit, if it makes your work more accessible for translation or format conversion (e.g., ebook). <!-- TODO: why last sentence? what try say? --> Search engines may index your work, but then fund their work with advertising. </dd> <dt class="col-md-3">No derivatives</dt> <dd class="col-md-9">The ND feature requires that no adaptations be made of your work. Like NC, imposing this restriction may inhibit further sharing of your work. </dd> </dl> <h3 class="mt-4">Other Licenses</h3> <p> If you do not wish to require attribution of your work, or if you work for the US Government, you may wish to place your work in the public domain. This is the purpose of <a href="https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/" target="_blank">the CC0 license</a> listed above. </p> <h3 class="mt-4">Further Resources</h3> <p class="mb-0"> There are numerous other sources of information to guide selection of a license. We recommend <a target="_blank" href="https://arxiv.org/help/license">arXiv.org's license help</a> and <a target="_blank" href="https://asapbio.org/licensing-faq">ASAPbio's preprint licensing FAQ</a> pages. </p> </main> <div class="container-fluid mt-auto" id="eprintFooter"> <a href="https://iacr.org/"> <img id="iacrlogo" src="/img/iacrlogo_small.png" class="img-fluid d-block mx-auto" alt="IACR Logo"> </a> <div class="colorDiv"></div> <div class="alert alert-success w-75 mx-auto"> Note: In order to protect the privacy of readers, eprint.iacr.org does not use cookies or embedded third party content. </div> </div> <script src="/css/bootstrap/js/bootstrap.bundle.min.js"></script> <script> var topNavbar = document.getElementById('topNavbar'); if (topNavbar) { document.addEventListener('scroll', function(e) { if (window.scrollY > 100) { topNavbar.classList.add('scrolled'); } else { topNavbar.classList.remove('scrolled'); } }) } </script> </body> </html>