Rights Retention (RR) is a route to achieve immediate Open Access via the Green route (deposit into a repository), enabling authors to retain their intellectual ownership rights to their work to make the Author Accepted Manuscript (AAM) (or Version of Record (VoR) where the publisher allows) fully and immediately Open Access (OA) at the time of publication with a Creative Commons (CC) licence. Utilising RR enables authors to distribute copies of their work freely via any academic or research network; to use their work within any other work of their own or anyone else’s; to use their work for teaching and to share, use and re-use as they choose under CC-BY conditions.
For information about what University of Derby authors need to do to retain their rights click here.
Rights Retention (RR) was originally implemented by Harvard University in 2008 and then in 2018, by cOAlition S, a group of national research funders, supported by the European Commission and the European Research Council. Their Open Access (OA) publishing initiative, Plan S, aims to accelerate the transition towards full and immediate OA for all funded research outputs. cOAlition S signatory organisations, including co-founder, UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), the Wellcome Trust and the World Health Organisation (WHO) require that (at least) the AAM of all peer reviewed scholarly works reporting on original research supported in whole or in part by their funding are published under a CC- BY licence and without embargo. RR enables the AAM to achieve full and immediate OA through an institutional or subject repository ensuring maximum dissemination, discoverability and reuse.
The REF2029 OA Policy proposal underwent a sector consultation from March to June 2024. The proposal acknowledges the growing trend towards embedding rights retention in practice. The updated University Research Publication and Open Access Policy, along with the staff and student Intellectual Property Policies incorporating Rights Retention principles, will take effect on 1 October 2024. These changes will enable our institution to comply with the REF2029 requirements for short-form outputs.
See the Funder requirements and REF requirements sections of this guide for more information.
Rights Retention is grounded in the contract law principle of prior notice. When an author notifies a publisher at the point of submission that their Author Accepted Manuscript (AAM) is under a Creative Commons (CC) licence, this assertion takes precedence over any subsequent agreements. A prior CC-BY licence cannot be overridden by a later publishing contract.
Under the University of Derby Research Publication and Open Access Policy, as well as the staff and student Intellectual Property Policies, authors grant the University of Derby a perpetual, royalty-free, worldwide, sub-licensable, non-exclusive licence to copy, publish, and distribute their scholastic works (AAMs) under a CC licence for Open Access (OA) requirements. This licence, granted by the author to the University, supersedes any subsequent contract that a publisher might require the author to sign.
If an author informs a publisher about the prior licence or obligation and the publisher agrees, the publisher cannot later require the author to sign a more restrictive contract. If the publisher does not wish to comply with the prior licence, they have the option to desk reject the submission.