Authors who choose to publish gold open access with Elsevier are offered their choice of two CC licenses. We don’t offer this choice on self-archived subscription manuscripts and instead use a non-commercial CC-BY-NC-ND license. Green open access must work in harmony with the pay-to-read (subscription) business model and subscriptions are important for the sustainability of many journals, so the use of a non-commercial CC license is in place as an important safeguard. Surveys show that authors often choose NC ND of their own volition.