Applying the rights retention strategy

Goal: to disseminate a publication freely, free of charge, and immediately

  • Do you need immediate open access to your publication to meet your funder's requirements?
  • Do you need or want to disseminate a publication in open access, while also submitting it to the journal of your choice?
  • Do you prefer not to incur publication costs to pay for the dissemination of your publication in open access (gold open access)?

There is a solution to ensure that you retain sufficient rights when submitting your manuscript to the journal of your choice, so that you can disseminate your publication freely and at no extra cost: the Rights Retention Strategy (RRS), promoted by cOAlition S and supported by the French Committee for Open Science.

 

For more information, check out the guide from the French Committee for Open Science

How? A strategy that starts the moment a publication is submitted

1. When the publication is submitted, and then each time a version is sent to the publisher:

  • Inform your publisher: tell them that all versions submitted will be under a Creative Commons CC-BY licence, up to the version accepted for publication. You can use the first page of the manuscript, the form dedicated to submitting the publication, the cover letter, the acknowledgements section... You can copy one of the texts suggested in the guide from the French Committee for Open Science (see below).
  • Apply the Creative Commons CC-BY licence to your file (ideally on the front page so that it is visible). Simply copy the following URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. You can also insert the licence logo:

2. If you can, include this information in the contract you sign for publication. If you are unable to do so, that's not a problem. Your approach remains legally valid.

3. Deposit your manuscript accepted for publication in an open archive as soon as it is published.

Sample sentences to be included in the manuscript :

 

"For the purpose of Open Access, a CC-BY public copyright licence has been applied by the authors to the present document and will be applied to all subsequent versions up to the Author Accepted Manuscript arising from this submission."

« À des fins de diffusion en accès ouvert, une licence CC-BY a été appliquée par les auteurs au présent document et le sera à toute version ultérieure jusqu’au manuscrit auteur accepté pour publication résultant de cette soumission. » 

For more information and models adapted to different sources of funding: see the full guide.