LEXEI ALEXEEV AND SERPENTARIUM MUNDI WISH TO ENCOURAGE the dissemination and use of information about our Specialized On-Line Iconography Database™ (SOLID™) and the academic expertise that we publish on this Website. For this purpose, we intend to release content on our Website under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) licence.

What does the Creative Commons licence apply to?

The Creative Commons licence does not apply to everything on our Website. Content published under the Creative Commons licence will be marked with the following logo:



Why is not everything on the website published under a Creative Commons licence?

All the content on our Website is protected by internationally recognized laws of copyright and intellectual property. Alexei Alexeev and Serpentarium Mundi can decide the terms under which to release content for which we own the copyright. However, not all the content on our Website is owned exclusively by Alexei Alexeev. Some of it may have third-party intellectual property or image rights that Alexei Alexeev does not own. While we have made all reasonable efforts to obtain permission to post such material on our Website from its owners, we cannot allow any additional uses ourselves.

How can I use the content published under a Creative Commons licence?

Alexei Alexeev and Serpentarium Mundi publish some of the content on our Website under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) licence.

This licence allows you to:

	BY (Attribution)	Copy, distribute, display, and perform our copyrighted work and derivative works based upon it, but only if you give us credit in the way we request: © Alexei Alexeev and Serpentarium Mundi.
	NC (NonCommercial)	Copy, distribute, display, and perform our work and derivative works based upon it, but for non-commercial purposes only.
	SA (ShareAlike)	Distribute derivative works only under a licence identical to the licence that governs our work.

Creative Commons defines commercial use as “reproducing a work in any manner that is primarily intended for or directed toward commercial advantage or monetary compensation”.

To ensure clarity, Alexei Alexeev and Serpentarium Mundi consider the following to be commercial activities (this list is not exhaustive):

● Anything that is in itself charged for, including textbooks and academic books or journals;
● An individual’s website or blog that is used as a platform to promote or conduct commercial activities (for example, to sell products created or services provided by such an individual);
● A commercial organization’s website or blog, including the trading arms of charities;
● Freely distributed leaflets or merchandise that promote goods or services;
● Corporate stationery or any business communication such as annual reviews;
● Free-entry events, presentations, or lectures promoting a product or a service;
● Displays in public places offering or promoting a product or service, such as in a shop, restaurant, hotel, public bar, or property showroom.

Alexei Alexeev and Serpentarium Mundi consider the following to be non-commercial activities (this list is not exhaustive):

● Use in free-entry educational lectures (or in activities promoting them);
● Promotion of any non-commercial activity, such as a poster advertising a bursary;
● One-off classroom use;
● Reproduction within a thesis document submitted by a student at an educational institution (an electronic version of the thesis may be stored online by the educational institution as long as it is made available at no cost to the end user);
● Use in websites as long as they are informational, academic, or research-oriented and not linked to any commercial activity;
● Display within a free-entry public space (including museums and galleries), as long as the use is not promoting a product or a service;
● Educational and classroom use within an educational institution or in the course of formal instruction.

How can I use the content that is not published under a Creative Commons licence?

Any content found on our Website that is not marked as being published under a Creative Commons licence may be used where there is a legal exception to copyright. If you want to use Materials found on our Website in any different way or for any different purpose, you can request permission to do so by sending an email with the subject line "Requested Permission" to: alexeialexeev@rogers.com.

Please note: Alexei Alexeev and Serpentarium Mundi cannot guarantee that your use of any content found on our Website will not infringe any third-party copyright or other intellectual property rights. It is your responsibility to judge whether any of the content may need additional clearances for your intended use and to obtain them.

I am a doctoral candidate. Can I use Serpentarium Mundi content in my thesis?

Yes, you may use Serpentarium Mundi content at no charge in your thesis (including images from the database and content from our Website) as long as:

● We have made the content available under a Creative Commons licence;
● You attribute us with the appropriate credit line;
● If published, the thesis is made available for free and, if placed in electronic deposit, the electronic copy is also available for free;
● You or your academic institution further distributes our content by applying the same conditions under which we gave it to you.

What if my thesis is chosen for publication?

If your thesis is published, whether as an article or a book and whether in print or electronic format, you need to contact us to request permission by sending an email with the subject line "Requested Permission" to: alexeialexeev@rogers.com.

Can I use Serpentarium Mundi content on social media sites?

You may use Serpentarium Mundi content that has been made available under Creative Commons on social media sites, as long as the page does not advertise or is not connected to commercial activity or commercial services of any kind.

Please note: We distribute our content under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike licence, which does not allow use of our content for commercial purposes.

Some social media sites distribute content under a Creative Commons Attribution/ShareAlike licence, which does allow the content posted on their site to be further used commercially. In other cases, by uploading content to the social media site, the user is granting the host of the site permission to further use the content commercially. In those cases, posting Serpentarium Mundi content to those sites would not be allowed.

Can I use Serpentarium Mundi content in my article if it is published in an Open Access journal?

It depends. One of the conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike licence is that the content be further shared under the same conditions under which we shared it with you.

If the journal where you would like to publish our content is published under a licence that is less restrictive than ours (for example, CC BY-SA, which allows commercial uses) or more restrictive than ours (for example, CC BY-NC-ND, which doesn’t allow the creation of derivative works) you may not use our content without asking us for permission first.

If, on the other hand, the journal is published under a licence that would not limit or expand the rights we grant you (i.e., a CC BY-NC-SA licence), you may use the content we have published under a Creative Commons licence without needing further permission. If you are unsure under which licence the journal is being published, you should ask your editor for clarification.

What if the journal is published by a charity?

Again, it depends. Some charitable uses could be made within the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike licence. However, Creative Commons differentiates between uses, rather than between users, for its definitions of commercial and non-commercial uses. This means, for example, that:

● If a charity or not-for-profit organisation sells products in order to carry out fundraising or support itself, the activity is commercial because the sales (as opposed to free distribution) of the products are primarily intended or directed toward a commercial advantage, even if the commercial advantage is in the public interest of supporting the charity.
● On the other hand, if a commercial entity, such as a private university, holds a series of free-entry educational lectures, the activity may be non-commercial (provided it is not a form of marketing) even though the institution may normally charge commercial rates for all other courses and events.