Resources on Rights Retention

Rights retention means that creators (or their institutions) control the rights to their publications – such as the right to share, reuse, and make their work openly available – so the academic community and the public can access them without the need for additional fees. Currently, when many authors submit their work to be published in a journal they often sign over their copyright to the publisher, which then controls who can read, copy, or use the work. With rights retention, authors (or their institutions) keep enough rights to allow for open access and reuse.

Some publishers argue that holding exclusive rights allows them to manage services provided by academics including quality control and peer review, alongside distribution more effectively. But publishers have not always automatically held the rights to scholarly works; this is a relatively recent development linked to the commercialisation and expansion of academic publishing since the mid-20th century, and especially since the 1980s with the emergence of digital forms.

Rights retention is essential for open scholarship because it ensures that publicly funded research can be used and built upon by the wider community. 

Rights retention enables creators to share their research openly and immediately, increasing the reach and impact of their work. 

By retaining key rights, authors can license their work to publishers alongside making it available for access and reuse without delay, for example in an institutional repository. This approach aligns with the goals of open scholarship, removing barriers to accessing, reusing, and building upon research. 

Rights retention also helps authors and institutions comply with open access policies from funders like the Australian Research Council ARC, and the National Health and Medical Research Council NHMRC in Australia and Hīkina Whakatutuki, the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment MBIE in Aotearoa New Zealand.