Following the University's Rights Retention Pilot from Nov 2023 to Oct 2024, we are implementing an institutional rights retention approach via the Self-Archiving and Copyright approach which takes effect on 1 January 2025.
This will apply to all journal articles and conference papers submitted for publication from 1 January 2025 onwards.
It will enable University of Bath authors to retain the rights to re-use and re-distribute the accepted manuscripts of their journal articles and conference outputs as widely as possible while also meeting REF and funder open access requirements.
Authors can deposit their accepted manuscripts in Pure and make them open access at the point of online publication via the Research Portal under a Creative Commons licence with zero embargo. They will also be free to share them among colleagues and use them in their teaching.
The approach is useful for situations when:
Please click on the tabs above to find out more about the new approach and how it works.
Traditionally, publishers require authors to sign a copyright transfer agreement or an exclusive licence to publish. This usually means the only way to access the published work is to pay for it, and publisher permission is required for reuse. Rights Retention is based on the principle that authors and institutions should retain some reuse rights to their publications.
When you submit your work for publication, you are able to retain your rights to any accepted manuscript arising from that submission; this is because, as part of the new approach, the author assigns to the University of Bath a non-exclusive, irrevocable, worldwide licence to make the work available under a CC BY licence via the research portal on their behalf. This enables authors to post their AAM in Pure with no embargo, share it with colleagues and use it in their teaching.
Main benefits of rights retention
A growing number of research funders are mandating immediate open access to research outputs derived from their funding. This includes the Wellcome Trust, UKRI, Horizon Europe, Cancer Research UK and the NIHR. The open access requirements for REF2029 are likely to be more stringent. Higher education institutions and funders across the UK are driving the move towards open access through the Rights Retention Strategy (RRS) as promoted by cOAlitionS. A growing number of universities have implemented an institutional Rights Retention Policy.
This approach applies to authors and co-authors who are Academic/Research staff at the University of Bath but can also be adopted by Postgraduate Research students. It covers journal articles or conference proceedings, authored or co-authored while affiliated with the University of Bath, first submitted for publication from 1 January 2025.
Under the policy, authors grant the University a non-exclusive, irrevocable, worldwide licence to make manuscripts of their scholarly articles publicly available under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) licence or a more permissive licence. Authors apply a CC BY licence to the AAM upon submission, giving precedence over any subsequent publisher's licensing agreement.
The corresponding author is responsible for making co-authors aware of the requirements of the Self-Archiving and Copyright approach and agreeing on a licence before submission. While CC BY is strongly encouraged, the University recognises the need for different licences based on funder requirements, such as CC BY-ND or the Open Government Licence for research subject to Crown copyright. You may wish to use our email template to contact your co-authors.
To inform publishers of their intentions, it is suggested that researchers include the following rights retention statement in the 'acknowledgements' section of their manuscript and the publisher cover letter when submitting any journal article or peer-reviewed conference paper for publication.
"For the purpose of open access, the author(s) has applied a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) licence to any Author Accepted Manuscript version arising from this submission."
If your funder’s policy requires a different statement, use that one instead.
The statement is particularly important for making your work open access via the green (self-archiving) route if your publisher's policy requires an embargo or a more restrictive licence than your funder's policy allows. However the University has notified all major publishers of this policy and in these instances, the addition of the statement to your submitted manuscript is advised by not necessary.
See list of publishers contacted [link to follow]
Once your paper is accepted by the publisher, upload a copy of your Authors’ Accepted Manuscript (AAM) to Pure. The open access team will ensure that the file is released under a CC-BY licence upon publication. If you would prefer a different Creative Commons licence, please email: openaccess@bath.ac.uk
If a publisher asks you to remove the statement because the work is being made open access through another route, you are free to do so. Removing the statement from the submission does not remove the prior licence you automatically give to the University. You can still make the accepted manuscript downloadable from the repository from the first day of publication under the CC BY licence without breaking copyright law.
When your work is published online the OA team will ensure that the accepted manuscript is made open access via Pure under a CC BY licence.
You should include the University of Bath affiliation in all submissions to ensure full credit is given in bibliometric searches carried out for the assessment of research, league tables or other purposes. All researchers should use the form below when submitting an item for publication. As a bare minimum the phrase The University of Bath must be used, but the following format is preferred:
<Institute/Department> <University of Bath> <Postal Address>
The Copyright and Self-Archiving approach does not apply to monographs, scholarly editions, textbooks, book chapters, collections of essays, datasets, or other outputs that are not scholarly articles, but the University encourages making these as openly available as possible.
The University allows staff to voluntarily opt out of immediate open access or the assignment of a CC BY licence for a specific publication. Be aware that opting out may result in non-compliance with funders policies, potentially leading to sanctions or loss of grant money.
If you are considering opting out, please email openaccess@bath.ac.uk for advice. The OA team will need to ensure your Pure deposit follows your publisher's requirements instead of being made immediately available. We therefore ask you to indicate your opt-out when uploading to Pure at acceptance. If not notified, the article may be made open access under the CC BY licence, which is irrevocable. For more information, visit the Support page.
Other members of the University community, such as PGRs, may voluntarily opt-in to the policy. Contact the OA Team for information on how to do this or if you have any follow-up questions.
The University of Bath strongly encourages researchers, if they have not already done so, to register for an ORCID and populate their ORCID record. This can be done automatically via information already held in Pure you will need to edit your profile and authorise the connection between Pure and your ORCID profile. See further guidance. The University of Bath then asks researchers to use their ORCID in research outputs
Translation of Rights Retention Statement
The University of Edinburgh has helpfully provided a translation of the RRS statement in the following languages: Spanish, French, Greek, German, Polish, Norwegian, Portuguese, Romanian, Chinese, Italian, and Welsh.
Plan S Rights Retention Strategy
Created by Coalition-S, the documents detail the benefits of RRS and how it works.
The open access team will support you in meeting the requirements of the Self-Archiving and Copyright approach. Please contact us at: openaccess@bath.ac.uk if you have any questions about the process.
You will need to ensure that your co-authors are aware of the requirement to make your AAM openly available at the point of online publication with a CC BY licence. You are welcome to use this template email to inform co-authors about the requirements of the Self-Archiving and Copyright approach.
The University recognises that there may be situations when it is difficult to follow the requirements for specific submissions and in these cases you may wish to voluntarily opt out of the requirement for immediate open access, or the assignation of a CC BY licence. For example, you may wish to apply a publisher-specified embargo or a more restrictive licence such as CC BY-ND. Please note that:
Please notify the open access team if you wish to opt out for a specific output and we will ensure your output is validated accordingly.