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The first journals with the SPARC Europe Open Access Seal were added to the Directory of Open Access Journals http://www.doaj.orgTo qualify for the SPARC Europe Seal a journal must use the Creative Commons By (CC-BY) license which is the most user-friendly license and corresponds to the ethos of the Budapest Open Access Initiative. The second strand of the Seal is that journals should provide metadata for all their articles to the DOAJ, who will then make the metadata OAI-compliant.Unfortunately only the publishers can add the license status to DOAJ (personal mail by Anna-Lena Johansson, May 21, 2008). This decision isn't appropriate. None of the many BioMedCentral CC-BY journals is tagged with CC-BY in DOAJ.According to my mantra make all research results CC-BY I recommend that all Open Access journals should apply for the SPARC Europe OA seal.If a journal publisher don't want CC-BY it should consider another CC llicense.But anyway publishers should make the license and self-archiving status of the journal clear. Here are some tips.Make a link called "Copyright" on your journal page. Answer the following questions in the section "Copyright" in a clear manner.* What are authors allowed?See the SHERPA-ROMEO-Listhttp://www.sherpa.ac.uk/romeo.phpPlease allow that authors can use the publisher's PDF as postprint (eventually after an embargo period).Please allow that an author can put his article in the repository with a CC license.* What are third-parties re-use rights beyond "fair use"?Please choose CC-BY and get the SPARC Europe OA seal (providing the article metadata to DOAJ isn't difficult)!Put the CC-BY button on your homepage and in each full text (HMTL and PDF).If you don't want this please make clear* if there is another CC license (please make clear if all articles have the same license or if the licenses are differing)* that classroom use is allowed* that third parties can put articles in an academic Open Access repository* that scientific data-mining is allowed (see e.g. http://archiv.twoday.net/stories/4971187 and Peter Murray Rust's weblog passim)If you want none of these suggestions - that's OK but don't think you are an OPEN ACCESS PUBLISHER!