BOAI/Section2

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On licensing and reuse

2.1

• We recommend CC-BY or an equivalent license as the optimal license for the publication, distribution, use, and reuse of scholarly work.
• OA repositories typically depend on permissions from others, such as authors or publishers, and are rarely in a position to require open licenses.
• However, policy makers in a position to direct deposits into repositories should require open licenses, preferably CC-BY, when they can.
• OA journals are always in a position to require open licenses, yet most of them do not yet take advantage of the opportunity.
• We recommend CC-BY for all OA journals.
• In developing strategy and setting priorities, we recognize that gratis access is better than priced access, libre access is better than gratis access, and libre under CC-BY or the equivalent is better than libre under more restrictive open licenses.
• We should achieve what we can when we can.
• We should not delay achieving gratis in order to achieve libre, and we should not stop with gratis when we can achieve libre.

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