Rights Retention Strategy

In relation to the NCN’s decision to adopt the Policy of Open Access to publications resulting from research projects funded or co-funded by the National Science Centre (hereinafter referred to as the “Policy”), we wish to inform you that drawing up a Rights Retention Strategy by the members of the cOAlition S was the next step in the implementation of Plan S.

The strategy is designed to safeguard researchers’ intellectual property rights to publications and allow authors to retain the right to decide to publish their research results without the time embargo imposed by the publisher.

One of the three publication paths compliant with the provisions of Plan S and the Policy involves publication of research results in open-access repositories where, as a minimum requirement, the author must submit the Author Accepted Manuscript with a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) licence at the time of publication in a closed-access journal. The Rights Retention Strategy is geared specifically toward protecting the authors’ right to publish their manuscripts in open-access repositories based on a CC BY licence.

Today, the members of cOAlition S sent out a letter informing publishers of the Rights Retention Strategy adopted by research-funding agencies and calling upon them to respond to these new conditions, which contradict their normal publishing policy.

The letter to publishers, the details of the Strategy, and the FAQ can be found here.