KR21 Position paper on Authors’ Rights Retention

"Knowledge Rights 21 (KR21) supports the open dissemination of knowledge and sees it as essential for research, education, innovation and cultural participation. It also increases the visibility, impact and societal benefits of research. This position paper should be read in conjunction with KR21’s Secondary Publishing Rights Position Paper. Author rights retention and secondary publishing laws complement and work together to ensure that academic research and scholarship, not just when it is taxpayer-funded, can be disseminated as widely as possible. In support of the development of a true European Research Area (ERA) and given extensive efforts to promote cross-border research collaboration, we are recommending that the European Commission propose legislation for a Secondary Publishing Right at least for all publicly funded research outputs, either on its own as a stand-alone instrument or in the context of a wider package promoting research and/or open science. This should also include strong governmental support for the development of author rights retention policies by all research institutions, in particular for published research outputs to which such a secondary publishing right may not apply, as set out below...."