Copyright & LicenseJournal of Clinical and Practical Nursing
JCPN employs author-friendly open access licensing that maximizes the impact of your nursing research while protecting your intellectual property rights. Understand how Creative Commons licensing enables broad dissemination while maintaining proper attribution.
Author Copyright Retention
The Journal of Clinical and Practical Nursing operates under an author-friendly copyright model where researchers retain full ownership of their published work. Unlike traditional subscription journals that require authors to transfer copyright to the publisher, JCPN authors maintain all intellectual property rights to their manuscripts, data, and findings. This approach ensures that nursing researchers control how their work is used, shared, and built upon by colleagues worldwide.
By retaining copyright, authors can freely use their published articles for teaching purposes, include the work in institutional repositories, distribute copies to colleagues, present findings at conferences, and adapt the research for subsequent publications or derivative works. This flexibility is particularly valuable for nurse educators and clinical researchers who frequently repurpose their scholarship for educational materials, policy briefs, and clinical guidelines that improve patient care.
Our commitment to author copyright reflects the evolving landscape of academic publishing where open access models empower researchers rather than restricting how they can use their own work. Nursing science advances most rapidly when researchers have maximum flexibility to share and apply their findings in diverse contexts across clinical practice, education, and policy development.
Creative Commons CC BY 4.0 License
Share Freely
Copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format for any purpose, including commercial applications, educational materials, and policy documents.
Adapt and Build
Remix, transform, and build upon the material for your own research, teaching, or clinical practice applications without seeking additional permission.
Attribution Required
Give appropriate credit to the original authors, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made when using or adapting the work.
No Additional Restrictions
You may not apply legal terms or technological measures that legally restrict others from doing anything the license permits.
Understanding CC BY Licensing
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) is the most permissive of the standard Creative Commons licenses, enabling maximum reuse and impact for your nursing research. Under this license, anyone anywhere in the world can share, copy, redistribute, adapt, remix, and build upon your work for any purpose, including commercial applications, provided they give you appropriate credit as the original creator.
This licensing approach aligns with the principles of open science and evidence-based practice in nursing, where rapid dissemination of research findings to clinical practitioners and educators is essential for improving patient outcomes. When your research is freely accessible and reusable, it reaches nurses in resource-limited settings who might not otherwise have access to current evidence, and it can be incorporated into educational curricula, clinical protocols, and policy documents without licensing barriers.
The attribution requirement ensures you receive recognition for your intellectual contributions while enabling others to build upon your work. Proper attribution includes citing your original publication, acknowledging you as the author, and indicating whether modifications were made when adapting your research for new purposes or audiences.
Practical Reuse Examples
Under CC BY 4.0 licensing, you may translate your published article into other languages and share it with nursing communities globally, incorporate figures and data into educational presentations for nursing students, include published content in grant applications and institutional reports, share the full article on social media platforms to expand readership and impact, and create derivative works such as clinical guidelines or patient education materials based on your findings. All such uses simply require appropriate citation of the original publication.
Institutions may include JCPN articles in their repositories and digital libraries, making your research permanently accessible through their library systems. Healthcare organizations may incorporate your findings into clinical protocols and practice guidelines, helping translate your research into improved patient care across diverse clinical settings.
Questions About Licensing?
Our editorial team is happy to answer questions about copyright, licensing, and how to properly attribute JCPN articles in your work.
Contact Editorial Office
