Generally, copyright is a set of exclusive rights granted to the author of an original work, including the right to copy, distribute and adapt the work. Authors have the exclusive right to exercise control over copying and other exploitation of the works for a specific period of time, after which the work is said to enter the public domain. Uses covered under limitations and exceptions to copyright, such as fair use, do not require permission from the copyright owner. All other uses require permission and copyright owners can license or permanently transfer or assign their exclusive rights to others.

However, Open Access journal publishing has created a number of entirely new copyright models. These copyright models stand in contrast to the model used by traditional academic journals in which the copyright is effectively transferred from the author to the journal publisher, with only minor variations in practice. The emergence of the Creative Commons has changed the copyright slogan "all rights reserved" into the slogan "some rights reserved," and has created various types of licences whereby the creators can protect their works while still encouraging certain defined uses.

SGJ is a strong advocate of the Creative Commons licence 'attribution'. This licence guarantees to the author the moral rights ? the right to be cited through a proper citation ? but otherwise gives broad permission to use and reuse the article, including for commercial purposes.

How do I properly attribute a Creative Commons licensed work?

All current CC licenses require that you attribute the original author(s). If the copyright holder has not specified any particular way to attribute them, this does not mean that you do not have to give attribution. It simply means that you will have to give attribution to the best of your ability with the information you do have. Generally speaking, this implies five things:
If the work itself contains any copyright notices placed there by the copyright holder, you must leave those notices intact, or reproduce them in a way that is reasonable to the medium in which you are re-publishing the work.
Cite the author's name, screen name, user identification, etc. If you are publishing on the Internet, it is nice to link that name to the person's profile page, if such a page exists.
Cite the work's title or name, if such a thing exists. If you are publishing on the Internet, it is nice to link the name or title directly to the original work.
Cite the specific CC license the work is under. If you are publishing on the Internet, it is nice if the license citation links to the license on the CC website.
If you are making a derivative work or adaptation, in addition to the above, you need to identify that your work is a derivative work i.e., ?This is a Finnish translation of the [original work] by [author].? or ?Screenplay based on [original work] by [author].?

In the case where a copyright holder does choose to specify the manner of attribution, in addition to the requirement of leaving intact existing copyright notices, they are only able to require certain things. Namely:
They may require that you attribute the work to a certain name, pseudonym or even an organization of some sort.
They may require you to associate/provide a certain URL (web address) for the work.

To read more, click here for Creative Commons Attribution License.