Developing and managing institutional rights retention policies - Jisc

An increasing number of higher education institutions (HEIs) are implementing institutional rights retention policies (IRRPs) which usually apply to university staff members with a responsibility for research. They typically confirm that members of staff own the copyright to their scholarly works but grant a licence to the University to make the author accepted manuscript (AAM) available via their repository under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) licence. This automatic grant of licence ensures that research findings can be made open access (OA) on publication, ensuring the benefits of research can be realised immediately in full compliance with research funder’s open access policies, including UKRI and Wellcome Trust.

Why rights retention is important

IRRPs are intended to support authors in retaining rights to their own work and to make repository-based OA faster and more frictionless.  Authors can then also submit their manuscripts for publication to their preferred journal, including subscription journals, whilst remaining fully compliant with their funder’s policies...."