Imperial's open access policy | Imperial College London

"Imperial is updating its Open Access (OA) policy to allow researchers to make peer-reviewed journal articles and conference proceedings available on an OA basis without post-publication embargoes. The Research Publications Open Access Policy (RPOAP) enables those outputs to meet funder obligations and to be eligible for the next Research Excellence Framework (REF) exercise....

Without rights retention, publishers can require authors to sign a Copyright Transfer Agreement to publish their articles and impose embargo periods lasting several years during which the article is not OA. Authors need to add a rights retention statement to every manuscript at the point of submission to retain the right to share and reuse their work without embargo. Under RPOAP, all of this changes. 

RPOAP brings Imperial into line with universities in the UK and overseas that have implemented rights retention policies.  

The ultimate question is: who decides? Should publishers get to decide what research readers see and what they can do with it, or should it be for the research community to decide for itself? RPOAP answers the question in favour of the community.."