Creative Commons

All CC licences require attribution. Although there is no one way to structure your attribution statement, Creative Commons recommends that an ideal attribution should include the:

• Title of the resource (with a link to the source)
• Author/creator (with a link to their profile page)
• CC Licence (with a link to the license details on the Creative Commons website)

Note: You can also choose to use a standard citation style such as APA or MLA, but you must always include a link to the CC licence.

See the Creative Commons Recommended Practices for Attribution wiki for more details. 

Examples:

1.  You have adapted this CC BY-NC-SA licensed resource from Alberta Health Services.

   You can cite it this way:

   Adapted under terms of a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International licence from:

   Alberta Health Services, Policy, Practice, Access & Case Management, Provincial Seniors Health and Continuing Care. (2023). Care Planning Education Resource. https://www.albertahealthservices.ca/assets/info/seniors/if-sen-cc-care-planning-education-resource.pdf. 

   Remember: When you adapt a CC-BY-NC-SA or CC-BY-SA resource, you must share your adaptation under the same licence. See Assigning CC Licences at Nova Scotia Health for details on how to do this.

2.  You want to download and share the pdf of this article on a Library Services Subject Guide. 

   You can cite the article in APA format:

   Mikula-Noble, N., Cormie, V., McCowan, R.E., McCowan, C. (2025). Identifying clusters of multimorbid disease and differences by age, sex, and socioeconomic status: A systematic review. PLOS One 20(8). https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0329794. Licensed CC BY 4.0 International.

3. You plan to use this CC BY licensed image in a patient education pamphlet.

You can put the attribution statement directly under the image.

Blausen 0770 Respiratory System 02, by BruceBlaus is licensed CC BY 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons

Microsoft Office gives you the option to insert pictures from an Online Pictures library. These pictures are either from free-to-use sources such as Pixabay, are in the Public Domain, or are Creative Commons licensed.

If the image you choose is CC-licensed, a generic attribution may be included below the image. For example:

This Photo by Unknown Author is licensed under CC BY

To obtain the correct title, author/creator name and licence details:

1. Select the generic image title, This Photo, to view the original image.
2. Replace the generic text with the actual title
3. Link the image title to the source of the image
4. Replace Unknown author with the author/creator's name
5. Link the author/creator's name to their online profile if available 
6. Check to make sure that the CC licence and link are correct.

The correct attribution for the example above is: Patient talking with doctor by NIH Clinical Center is licensed under CC BY 2.0.