The news yesterday from US trade Ambassador Katherine Tait that the Biden-Harris administration supports waiving IP protections for COVID vaccines is not just welcome, it is laying a stake in the ground for others to follow. The hesitancy of both the EU and UK to support the US places them on the wrong side of…

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, Creative Commons published an article titled, “Now Is the Time for Open Access Policies—Here’s Why” in March 2020. We felt it imperative to underscore the importance of open access, specifically open science, in times of crisis. A lot has changed since March of last year and it’s important to…

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, Creative Commons published an article titled, “Now Is the Time for Open Access Policies—Here’s Why” in March 2020. A lot has changed since then and it’s important to assess the progress made and take a hard look at the dangers ahead. In this panel, we’ll examine the fields of…

Today we’re excited to launch a new podcast called Open Minds … from Creative Commons. It’s CC’s 20th anniversary this year. And to celebrate, we decided to launch this show, a series of conversations with people working on the issues we’re involved with and excited about. Expect Open Minds to feature folks from the worlds of…

It’s almost over. The year that shall not be named will soon end with a collective sigh and a half-hearted wave from humanity. However, before we stumble into what one can only hope will be a less disastrous year, we’re determined to spread some joy and share our gratitude. We’re grateful for every image, video,…

Dear Mr. President-elect, First, I’d like to offer my sincere congratulations to you and to Vice President-elect Kamala Harris. This has been such a difficult year for so many around the world, and in this time of extreme polarization it is encouraging to hear you both talk about bringing people together to meet our common…

Credit: 2010 PopTech Science and Public Leadership Fellows by PopTech (CC BY-SA 2.0).

Last month, cOAlition S released its Rights Retention Strategy to safeguard researchers’ intellectual ownership rights and suppress unreasonable embargo periods—Creative Commons (CC) keenly supports this initiative.  Modernizing an outdated academic publishing system  Under a traditional publishing model, researchers who want to publish their articles in a journal typically need to assign or exclusively license their…

Astronaut Edwin Aldrin walks on lunar surface near leg of Lunar Module. Credit: Neil Armstrong/NASA, (1969) in the public domain.

It’s July 20, 1969.  Along with 600 million people, nine-year-old Chris Hadfield is glued to his television—watching intently as American astronaut Neil Armstrong glides down the ladder of the Lunar Module, and in one swift pounce, touches the dust of a familiar yet alien world. His words forever immortalized, “That’s one small step for man,…

The JOGL team by Thomas Landrain (CC BY).

Thousands of strangers working together, almost entirely online, to effectively solve an urgent, global challenge is remarkable—and it’s happening, right now. Recently, we published a post titled, “Open-Source Medical Hardware: What You Should Know and What You Can Do” examining the collaborative efforts by volunteer groups, universities, and research centers to solve the medical supply…

"The Chancellor Rishi Sunak visits a coronavirus testing laboratory in Leeds," by HM Treasury, licensed CC BY-NC-SA.

In response to the global health emergency caused by COVID-19, we’ve seen an array of organizations, publications, and governments make COVID-19 related research open access. For example, the U.S. National Library of Medicine recently released the COVID-19 Open Research Dataset (CORD-19)—a machine-readable coronavirus literature collection with over 29,000 articles available for text and data mining…