欧美高清

Open AccessRights Retention Strategy

The 欧美高清 Institutional Rights Retention Policy (IRRP), came into force on 1st Jan 2024. With the passing of this IRRP, 欧美高清 joined a that have committed to offer immediate access to full-text accepted manuscripts (AAMs) when Gold Open Access is not achievable for them. This is in line with the requirements of the REF2029 Open Access policy.

The adoption of the 欧美高清 IRRP is being carefully monitored. An report was published in January 2025, examining the number of rights retention instances during the first twelve months of the policy and their distribution by department and publisher.

What is the Rights Retention Strategy?

The Rights Retention Strategy (RRS) is a mechanism to make immediate Open Access the default scholarly communications standard.

In September 2018 a group of mostly European research funders – including the UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) and the Wellcome Trust – grouped under the '' banner launched a plan (“Plan S”) to accelerate the transition towards a fully Open Access publishing landscape.

Plan S includes a number of new Open Access policies that both the Wellcome and the UKRI have adopted. These apply to all their funded researchers – from January 2021 in the case of the Wellcome Trust and for manuscripts submitted from 1 April 2022 in the case of the UKRI.

The most ambitious of these Plan S policies is the promotion of the so-called "transformative agreements" with publishers (also known as Read & Publish deals) that allow researchers at signatory institutions to publish Gold Open Access at no cost in a (large) number of eligible journals covered under the deal. A database of all these journals called has recently been made available so that 欧美高清 corresponding authors can check where they can publish Gold OA at no cost for them.

is a Plan S policy whereby cOAlition S-member funders are trying to move away from embargo periods. This means that both the and the  require copies of the full-text accepted manuscripts for their funded papers to be made openly available embargo-free and under a CC BY licence whenever Gold Open Access is not possible for these publications.

Institutional Rights Retention Policies (IRRP) are the result of a wider move by UK universities to expand the coverage of funder-issued rights retention policies to all institutional publications. This move was pioneered by the at the start of 2022 and has since been replicated by dozens of UK research-intensive HEIs, including 欧美高清. The embargo-free deposit of AAMs is aligned with the REF2029 Open Access policy.

Summary: Complying with the UKRI Open Access policy

For OA publishers where no Read and Publish deal currently is agreed, UKRI-funded authors should follow one of the following routes for OA publication:

  • Route 1: publishing Gold Open Access: in order for the library to be able to pay the Open Access publishing fee for a UKRI-funded manuscript, the journal needs to be fully Open Access.
  • Route 2: Rights Retention: depositing a copy of the full-text accepted manuscript under a no embargo period and a CC BY licence

While the research funders’ policy encourages authors of their funded manuscripts to include a 2-line rights retention statement in the funding acknowledgements section of such manuscripts, this is no longer required for 欧美高清 authors, given that a large number of publishers have been officially notified about the 欧美高清 Institutional Rights Retention Policy. The wording of the 欧美高清 IRRP was in fact updated in May 2025 to reflect this change.

FAQs

The is the mechanism envisioned by a – the Wellcome Trust and the UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) among them – to promote the deposit of full-text accepted manuscripts in institutional systems upon manuscript acceptance under no embargo and under a Creative Commons licence. The RRS is seen as a free and complementary approach to the promotion of paid-for Gold Open Access (either via the payment of Article Processing Charges or via ‘Transformative’ or ‘Read & Publish’ agreements with publishers) so that all of their funded research outputs become openly available for free as soon as the manuscripts get published in a journal.

Both the Wellcome Trust and the UKRI included this rights retention strategy in their updated Open Access policies -- applicable to journal articles submitted from Jan 1st, 2021 for the and to articles submitted from Apr 1st, 2022 . The RRS is also endorsed by the European Commission for projects run under the Horizon Europe research framework programme, see page 108 under “Open science: open access to scientific publications” on the version 1.2 dated 1 Nov 2024).

Free Green Open Access, i.e. the deposit of full-text accepted manuscripts upon manuscript acceptance in an institutional repository, was already an accepted mechanism to comply with the Wellcome and UKRI Open Access policies. The new development is that embargo periods are no longer accepted by research funders behind Plan S, who also want the accepted manuscripts for publications stemming from their funded projects to be deposited under a Creative Commons licence, ideally a CC BY 4.0.

No. The RRS only applies when there is no way to make a paper Gold Open Access via the Read & Publish deals that universities are signing with publishers or via the payment of an APC. The increasingly widespread R&P deals allow any manuscript with a 欧美高清 corresponding author accepted in a list of eligible hybrid journals to be published Gold Open Access at no cost for the authors. The lists of over 11,000 eligible journals is available on our institutional portal.

Read & Publish agreements (aka Transformative Agreements or TAs) are the default choice that the group of research funders behind Plan S have identified as the best way to achieve immediate Open Access for all research outputs stemming from their funded projects. As stated above, these deals provide a mechanism for institutions and their consortia to provide blanket OA to their researchers by negotiating with publishers a common fee for reading (i.e. the traditional subscription charges) and publishing (i.e. the Open Access publishing fees), usually over a period of several years.

The reason why these agreements are called transformative is that they are expected to be a transitional mechanism that will allow publishers to gradually flip all their titles to fully Gold Open Access (i.e. with no subscription fees anymore and free for everyone to read). Plan S funders have asked publishers to produce plans for evolving the business model for their journals so that there is evidence for the shift towards reaching a fully Open Access landscape by 2024.

The procedure recommended by the funders (please see ) is to include a specific wording in the funding acknowledgements section of the manuscript in which the authors state that they are planning to apply a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) licence to the full-text accepted manuscript once the submission gets accepted by the journal. See item 12, page 3 in the

However, these rights retention statements recommended by research funders like the UKRI and the Wellcome Trust are no longer required for 欧美高清 authors. This is because most publishers have been officially notified about the passing of the 欧美高清 IRRP, meaning that authors no longer need to inform publishers of their intention to apply rights retention to their manuscripts.

The library team in charge of processing and validating the publication records in Pure examine the publishing route for each 欧美高清 output and directly apply rights retention where applicable. This is unless an author specifically requests an opt-out from the institutional policy by emailing the Open Access mailbox to the effect.

Some publishers are not happy about rights retention and its inclusion in the updated UKRI policy, since they argue that Plan S is all about promoting Gold Open Access via the implementation of Read & Publish agreements. On the other hand, other publishers with this mechanism. 

The removal of the requirement to include rights retention statements on manuscripts is in fact aimed at – among other things – protecting authors from any possible publisher pushback regarding the application of rights retention. Moreover, ‘rights retention clauses’ are gradually being included in the wording of Read & Publish agreement where publishers state they acknowledge the right of institutions to apply rights retention.

This should not happen any longer given that there’s no obligation to include rights retention statements on manuscripts. However, if this were the case please contact the Open Access mailbox at openaccess@strath.ac.uk so that we can provide specific advice. Please also feel free to contact us for any other question on the application of rights retention.

Rights retention is now part of the institutional Open Access policy, so accepted manuscripts that will not be published Gold Open Access will be released embargo-free via the Strathprints repository upon first online publication of the paper on the journal website. Where 欧美高清 authors are not the corresponding authors, it’s worth raising this policy with the corresponding authors, particularly if they’re based outside the UK. Please feel free to reach out to the Open Access mailbox to discuss a specific submission and we’ll be happy to advise.

Yes, this rights retention strategy has regularly been included in any Open Access update delivered to departments and research groups since the institutional policy was passed by Senate. If you’d like a dissemination session to be arranged for your Department/School/Research Group please drop us a line at the Open Access mailbox.

The recently announced does not strictly include the release of embargo-free accepted manuscripts via repositories when they cannot be published Gold Open Access. However, it does indeed include a requirement for shortened embargo periods of up to 6 months for STM and 12 months for SSH publications. With the current embargo policies run by the publishers, the only way to meet this REF2029 requirement is to apply rights retention.

欧美高清 authors do not need to include this statement because their submissions are already covered by the 欧美高清 IRRP.

The institutional policy clearly states that rights retention applies to all institutional research outputs. Please see  for more information.