The Rights Retention Strategy (RRS) enables authors to exercise the rights they have on their manuscripts to deposit a copy of the Author Accepted Manuscript (AAM) in a repository on publication and provide open access to it. To help researchers acknowledge and assert their rights, cOAlition S is launching an online campaign, under the theme “Publish with Power: Protect your rights“. The campaign aims to encourage researchers to retain their intellectual property rights, explains the steps they need to take and highlights the benefits for them and also for science and society. Below is a suite of resources about the Rights Retention Strategy, freely available for downloading, using and sharing.
Why would you use these templates
In 2020 cOAlition S released its Rights Retention Strategy (RRS) with the dual purpose of enabling authors to retain rights that automatically belong to the author, and to enable compliance with their funders’ OA policy via dissemination in a repository. Unfortunately, some publishers are being unclear and obstructive with authors about them asserting their copyright holders’ rights. They insist on the author agreeing to an embargo by using a contract, or other tactics, that conflicts with their grant condition. This comes at an advanced stage of the peer review process when the article review is accepted. At this point, authors are reluctant to challenge the publisher’s dictate and restart the whole process, but they are also confused and feel under threat of legal action by the publisher if they breach the journal’s conflicting embargo contract. Equally, it is an author’s fundamental right to assert their own rights to their own work, whether funded or not.
When & how to use them
To help authors ask for the clarity they need before peer review proceeds, we have created the pre-submission letter template and the submission cover letter template.
Such timely clarity will save time and energy being wasted by authors and reviewers for a journal that, at acceptance, will cause difficulties by not allowing the author to comply with their pre-existing grant agreement.
What to expect
cOAlition S funders would welcome authors sharing with them their experiences of employing these templates (anonymised or not) if that is possible.
The pre-submission & covering letter templates were created by cOAlition S and released under Public Domain Dedication CC0. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0
Consult with your funder for the specific way in which they apply the Rights Retention Strategy. For information, check the list of funders on the Implementation Roadmap of cOAlition S Organisations.
Have you benefited from the Rights Retention Strategy? Send us your feedback at info@coalition-s.org. We would love to hear your stories!