Research Publication, Open Access and Rights Retention Policy

Rights Retention enables 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 at the time of publication with a Creative Commons (CC) licence. Utilising Rights Retention 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 the work for teaching and to share, use and re-use their work as they choose under CC BY conditions. CC BY is a Creative Commons By Attribution licence which means that the original can be used, edited or adapted but the original must be credited. The most recent suite of Creative Commons Licences is version 4.0, released in 2013. For more information please see Glossary. 

Retaining copyright and or the license to publish over creative works, for example, journal articles and other scholarly output is becoming more prominent in the Open Research environment. This goes against common practice where the publisher retains the rights to researchers works. Since cOAlition S announced Plan S in 2018, along with the Rights Retention Strategy which is a route to ensure compliance with Plan S requirements, whilst maintaining the choice of publishing venue, other funders have followed suit. With their recently revised Open Access policies, major funders such as UKRI and Wellcome Trust now require their grantees to retain the rights to their work in support of Plan S principles. However, rights retention is also an important consideration for all - researchers in receipt of external funding and those who are not. If you created it, you should own it! 

Copyright of Research Publications

• The University of Derby recognises that, subject to third party agreements, it waives its rights of ownership of copyright in Research Publications (as defined in the Intellectual Property Policies for employees and students), which means that copyright is owned by the authors of the scholastic works and that they have the right to publish research in the venue of their choice.  
• The Intellectual Property Policies for both employees and students establish that the University is granted a perpetual, royalty-free, worldwide, in all formats (now known or yet to be devised), sub-licensable, non-exclusive licence by researchers to use, copy, publish and distribute for academic (i.e. research and teaching), promotional and administrative purposes, Research Publications created by authors as defined above, including for archival and Open Access purposes.  
• For the purposes of Rights Retention, at the point of submission to the publisher, the University requires that the submitted manuscript includes wording advising the publisher of the intention to retain rights. Appropriate wording can be found in the 'What do I need to do as an author to ensure that I retain my rights' section of this LibGuide. 

Open Access

• Upon acceptance for publication, authors will submit an electronic copy of the Author Accepted Manuscript (AAM) of each research publication (at no charge) to UDORA as soon as possible from the date of acceptance for publication.The Library will deposit and therefore make open the manuscript in a manner that will comply with any specific research funder requirements  
• Authors will submit the AAM to UDORA under a CC BY attribution licence which grants permissions for reuse, unless there is a valid reason to use a different licence (such as a funder requirement or an Open Government Licence for research subject to Crown copyright).  
• For the purposes of information retrieval, discovery, and to maintain a record of outputs from the University, a bibliographic record must be submitted to UDORA. 
• Outputs published prior to 1 January 2014, should be recorded in ORCiD. It is not mandatory for these outputs to be recorded in UDORA. Records harvested into UDORA from other sources (e.g. ORCiD, Publications Router) will be reviewed by Repository Editors for suitability before being deposited into UDORA. 
• The bibliographic record should include a link, where possible, to where the Version of Record is published, exhibited, or stored along with a persistent identifier and/or DOI.  
• The University supports the sharing and dissemination of Research Publications, but this must be done in an ethical and responsible way. The use of academic social networking sites (e.g., Research Gate, Academia.edu) is encouraged, but should always link back to the record and AAM (where permissible) in UDORA. 
• Where the lead or corresponding author has a primary affiliation with the University, the institution may support Open Access publication via the Gold route. See the Open Access LibGuide for more information.    
• The University recognises that there may be exceptional circumstances where it is not possible to comply with this Policy. In this case it may be permissible for the author to opt out of the requirement for immediate Open Access. Further information about exceptional circumstances can be found in the FAQs section of this guide.