All publishers must fully respect researchers’ rights by providing clarity and transparency on Open Access

"Our associations - CESAER, European University Association (EUA) and Science Europe - are strong supporters of Open Science and Open Access. It is fundamental that researchers, universities, and other research-performing organisations disseminate and reuse their research findings without restrictions or embargoes. We note that while many scholarly publishers are showing leadership in this area by fully embracing Open Access publishing models and Open Science practices, some do not support them sufficiently. These publishers still require researchers to sign over their rights and/or make them face re-use restrictions and embargoes on how they can use their own peer-reviewed research findings. We are especially concerned by the unclear and opaque communication and practices of some publishers as reported by cOAlition S. Such an approach complicates and confuses matters for researchers, impeding progress towards a scholarly communication system based on Open Access to research outputs. We urge those publishers to reconsider their position and modernise, ensuring they play their part in providing fair and transparent conditions for authors. These should fully respect researchers’ rights, including the right to share their peer-reviewed research findings without restrictions or embargoes. If a publisher or platform chooses to take the stance of requiring authors to sign away their rights, they should clearly and publicly state this to ensure that researchers make informed choices. More broadly, the standard position of platforms and publishers should be to empower researchers to publish their findings (including data and digital assets) while retaining their rights. Researchers who wish to deposit their author-accepted manuscript in a repository with an open license (e.g. CC BY), and without any embargo, must be able to do so. To sum up, models that continue to rely on barriers and that restrict what researchers can do with their research findings are outdated and must be replaced. As such, we fully support cOAlition S and others who explore a diversity of models for supporting the open dissemination of research...."