What Is Rights Retention?
Rights retention allows authors to share their peer-reviewed research open access without embargo.
By including rights retention statements in submitted manuscripts, authors can openly license their peer-reviewed and revised Author Accepted Manuscripts (AAMs). This allows AAMs to be shared in an open access repository without embargo. This strategy is typically used for journal articles and conference papers.
Author rights retention statements often read as follows:
"For the purposes of open access, the author has applied a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) licence to any Author Accepted Manuscript version arising from this submission."
The above example is from the University’s Principles for Open Access. These principles encourage authors to include rights retention statements when submitting journal articles and conference papers.
Principles for Open Access to Research Outputs at Melbourne
Rights retention is also a key aspect of the Plan S open access initiative and required of NHMRC and MRFF grant holders when pursuing repository open access pathways. See our Funder open access policies page for guidance on author rights retention requirements under the 2026 NHMRC and MRFF Open Science Policy.
Rights retention can enable immediate open access in our institutional repository, Minerva Access. You can find out more about the repository pathway to open access on our What is Open Access? page. Explore how to use our institutional repositories on the Repository Open Access page.
Rights Retention FAQ
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Rights retention statements are typically included in “Acknowledgements" sections of submitted manuscripts.
It is also best practice to include the statement in the submission’s accompanying cover letter, or in a note to the editor.
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Policies stated on journal or publisher websites can be the starting point for negotiation.
Publisher or journal websites often state that an embargo must be applied to AAMs in repositories. However, embargoes may be reduced or removed through negotiation, especially when open access is mandated by a funder.
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In many cases, no. If you sign an exclusive licence or agreement with your publisher, this may involve signing over many rights of copyright. Even if you retain copyright by name, you publisher may hold extensive rights for the duration of the copyright term. For example, the publisher may hold sole rights to publish, share, monetise, and make derivatives (such as translations) of your work. In such cases, you could only share manuscript versions of your work in a repository with publisher permission.
If you signed a limited or non-exclusive agreement, you should retain most of these rights. In most cases, this would allow you to at least share manuscripts of your article openly. Be sure to read your publishing contracts carefully before sharing any version of your publication.
Our Copyright website has further guidance on understanding publishing agreements.
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The rights retention statement should be included in the initial submission to a journal or conference proceedings.
You can attempt to negotiate rights retention after submission, but publishers may push back. Nonetheless, negotiating with your publisher to retain your rights is still worthwhile.
For further guidance, see the understanding publishing agreements page on our Copyright website.
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In 2020, a group of research funders known as cS announced their P Rights Retention Strategy. The strategy involves authors pre-emptively applying CC BY licences to their AAMs. This allows researchers to comply with funder open access policies.
Take the Wellcome Trust, a cOAlition S member, for example. Like the NHMRC, they have implemented rights retention requirements. Wellcome Trust grant conditions require that all submissions to peer-reviewed journals contain a rights retention statement.
Find out more on the Plan S Rights Retention Strategy page and its accompanying resources. You can read more about Plan S on our Funder Open Access Policies page.
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Yes, many universities have adopted author rights retention or institutional rights retention policies. These include:
- Harvard University (starting with the Faculty of Arts and Sciences in 2008)
- Stanford University (starting with the School of Education in 2008)
- Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) (since 2009)
- Auckland University of Technology (since 2020)
- University of New South Wales (UNSW) (since 2021)
- University of Cambridge (since 2022)
- University of Edinburgh (since 2022)
- University of Oxford (since 2023)
- and many more.
In 2020, the Council of Australian University Librarians (CAUL) published a report on rights retention: Intellectual property rights retention in scholarly works at Australian universities. The report recommended that universities implement rights retention policies. It also called for stronger rights retention approaches nationally.
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Rumsey (2022) refled on cOAlition S’s Rights Retention Strategy (RRS) a year after its launch. She points to “numerous examples of authors who have used the RRS and made their article freely available in a repository.” She notes that the main obstacle was that some publishers tried to make authors sign conflicting publishing agreements after peer review. They do this “despite having been previously informed about the RRS and fully aware that requirements are embedded in authors’ grant contracts.”
After a 12-month pilot at the University of Cambridge, rights retention was built into a new Self-Archiving Policy on 1 April 2023. Tumelty (2023) reflected that during the pilot, “there was no issue for most articles." However, "some publishers caused confusion through misinformation or by presenting conflicting licences for the researchers to sign.”
Moore (2022) also noted during the pilot that rights retention was accepted by most journals. This included including titles from Elsevier, Wiley, Sage, and Springer Nature. Some journals only accepted rights retention if it was required by a funder. Others requested the removal of rights retention statements when an open access publishing agreement was in place. A few tried to make authors sign conflicting licences after peer review. A small number of society journals rejected rights retention altogether.
The University of Edinburgh also wrote a blog post reflecting on the first nine months of their new rights retention policy in 2022. During this period, over 90% of their journal articles were available open access, most within one month of publication (U Edinburgh Library, 2022).
Further Support
For assistance depositing research outputs in Minerva Access, please email research-outputs@unimelb.edu.au.
For enquiries relating to copyright, licensing, and contracts, contact the Copyright Office.
For other open access and scholarly publishing enquiries, contact your discipline's Liaison Librarians.
Page last updated 16 April 2025.
Unless otherwise noted, the content of this page is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International licence.
Author Accepted Manuscript (AAM) / Accepted version
The version of an article, paper, book, or book chapter that has been accepted for publication. It is the author’s final manuscript version after peer review and revisions. It is a version before the publisher’s copyediting, typesetting, and formatting results in a proof.
Find out more about article versions on the Minerva Access website.
Repository
An online digital archive, usually open to the public, that stores and provides access to research outputs. Common types of repositories include: institutional repositories, general repositories, and subject repositories.
Embargo
In the context of scholarly publishing, embargoes are access restrictions placed on research outputs. While embargoed, research outputs are not available to the public. Embargoes can be temporary or permanent.
Most publishers of subscription (paywalled) journal articles, for example, place embargo requirements on peer-reviewed manuscripts. They often require that Author Accepted Manuscripts (AAMs) are embargoed at publication, typically for 12 or 24 months. Once the embargo has expired, the AAM can be made open access in a repository. Staff at our institutional repository, Minerva Access, check publisher policies and manage embargo periods before making any manuscripts publicly available.
Researchers may also choose to embargo their own outputs. This may be required for privacy, sensitivity, or to adhere to agreements with third parties. Datasets deposited to Melbourne Figshare, for example, can be embargoed when necessary. This results in a dataset record in Figshare with no publicly downloadable files. Graduate researchers may request to embargo their theses under some circumstances.
Submitted manuscript
The version of a publication originally submitted to a publisher, such as a journal or book publisher. This version typically undergoes editorial review and may subsequently be sent on for peer review.
In the past, submitted manuscripts were sometimes called preprints, although this term now has a different meaning: early versions of papers shared prior to peer review on preprint servers. Submitted manuscripts may be shared as preprints, or may already be available as preprints.
Find out more about article versions on the Minerva Access website.
Creative Commons licences
Open licences that have become best practice in open access publishing. They are built using a combination of elements:
- BY (Attribution)
- SA (Share-Alike)
- NC (Non-Commercial)
- ND (No Derivatives)
All licences are detailed on the Creative Commons website.
The most open of the licences is the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) licence. This licence allows authors to retain their copyright while granting others permission to distribute, use, adapt, remix, and build upon the material. It only requires that attribution is given to the original creator. This is the preferred licence of the Australian Research Council (ARC), the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC), and the University of Melbourne.
The most restrictive licence is the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives (CC BY-NC-ND) licence. This licence does not allow for any commercial uses or the sharing of any adaptations or derivatives. It greatly restricts how others can use the work. When adopted as part of an exclusive licence to publish with a publisher, it can result in a significant loss of author rights.