Research funder open access policies

The aim of the Rights Retention Strategy (RRS) is to ensure researchers have greater control over the rights to their work, and maximise the re-use of their accepted manuscripts. It was initially implemented by cOAlition S, an international consortium of research funders dedicated to open access for research outputs.

The Rights referred to applies to copyright in author accepted manuscripts of research outputs.

Rights retention refers to the expectation of many research funders, including UKRI and the Wellcome Trust, that author(s) retain ownership of copyright, instead of transferring it to journal publishers.

The strategy also requires that the author accepted manuscript is published immediately under an open licence, which allows other researchers to re-use and build upon the work. Normally this would be the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) licence (allowing free use by other researchers), although under certain circumstances, where funders allow it as an exception, the Creative Commons Attribution, NoDerivatives (CC BY-ND) licence may be used (which allows the work to be freely shared not altered).

When submitting a journal article to a publisher, the following statement should be included in the acknowledgements section of your submitted manuscript and any covering letter accompanying the submission:

'For the purpose of open access the author has applied a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) licence to any Author Accepted Manuscript version arising'

If a Creative Commons Attribution, NoDerivatives (CC BY-ND) licence is used, this statement should reflect that.

Notes

• Some publishers are reluctant to allow authors to retain copyright of their manscript and a Creative Commons licence to be applied, but may allow it if you explain that it is a condition of your funder.
• To avoid contravening your funders' requirements, you should not sign an agreement that requires copyright to be transferred to the publisher, or prevents a Creative Commons licence being used.

cOAlition S (n.d.) Plan S Rights Retention Strategy. Available at: https://www.coalition-s.org/rights-retention-strategy/ (Accessed: 23 January 2023) - an explanation of the RRS from the funders that are part of cOAlition S.

Rumsey, S. (2022) Reviewing the rights retentions strategy - a pathway to wider Open Access? Available at: https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2022/10/26/reviewing-the-rights-retention-strategy-a-pathway-to-wider-open-access  (Accessed: 23 January 2023) - an account of the RRS and how it has been implemented by institutions.