Rights Retention provides academic freedom and control:
- It enables researchers to submit manuscripts for publication to their preferred subscription or hybrid journal, whilst retaining rights over the work and complying with OA requirements.
- It facilitates wide and immediate dissemination of research outputs without restrictions: research outputs quickly reach a wide audience (including outside academia) and the Creative Commons Attribution licence CC BY allows sharing and reuse whilst making sure the author is still credited.
- It aids compliance with funder policies: immediate OA publication, without embargo, is a requirement of many funder policies, including UKRI. Rights Retention is in line with changes to the Research Excellence Framework (REF) coming into place in January 2026.
- It has the potential to reduce costs and academic inequalities: Rights Retention allows research to be made OA regardless of whether an institution can afford subscriptions or Article Processing Charges (APCs).
Under the Research Publications policy authors retain copyright of the AAM and in return, grant the University a non-exclusive, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free licence to make their AAM publicly available upon publication under a Creative Commons Attribution Licence CC BY, or similar licence terms without embargo.
Rights Retention will apply to peer-reviewed articles and conference papers published with an ISSN as a default unless the authors opt out (see the How do I opt out? section below).
This policy is effective from 1 December 2025.
The Library has provided written notice of this policy to the most frequently used publishers at LJMU (PDF, 60KB).
Please continue to deposit your outputs in Symplectic exactly as you do now. The library will do the rest.
Under defined circumstances (outlined in the Applicable exceptions for opting out section below), authors may request to opt out from the following obligations, as outlined in the policy:
- Immediate OA (zero embargo) on publication and instead comply with publisher defined embargo periods.
- Use of the CC BY licence and instead request a less permissive licence (for example: CC BY-NC).
It is the author's responsibility to ensure that opting out does not contravene the OA policy of any funder acknowledged in the research publication or make the research publication ineligible for submission to the REF.
To request an opt-out, authors should contact the Open Research Team stating which obligation they want to opt out of and which applicable exception which to use. Emails will be reviewed, and authors will receive a response to their request within 10 working days.
In cases where the opt-out is approved, the publication should still be added to Symplectic, and deposited to LJMU Research Online.
Publishing with a new or specialist publisher
In instances where an output is accepted for publication by a publisher not previously notified, the Library will apply publisher restrictions as appropriate (for example: embargo) and provide written notice to the publisher to ensure any subsequent publications are encompassed within the policy.
Third-party material
There may be circumstances where permission cannot be obtained to reuse third-party material reproduced in a manuscript under the same Creative Commons licence as the original parts of the work. In such cases, authors should consider the following solutions:
- Make a clear indication of the third-party material excluded from the overarching Creative Commons licence in the manuscript deposited in the repository by indicating the licence these materials are available under (for example: creative commons non-commercial licence)
- Consider excluding the material from the manuscript deposited in the repository
Where either of the options above would adversely impact understanding of the research, consider if a licence exception is applicable and apply to opt-out of applying the CC BY licence to the entire work.
Publisher refusal to proceed with publication
There may be rare circumstances where a publisher refuses to accept a submission based on the public licence granted by the author to the University. If an author still wishes to proceed with publication, they should seek the advice from The Library before signing any publishing or licensing agreement.
Collaboration
Research publications may be the result of collaboration with authors who are not affiliated with LJMU, and copyright may be jointly held with external authors. In such circumstances authors should make every reasonable effort to comply fully with the requirements of this policy and inform their co-authors at the earliest opportunity. Where full compliance is not feasible, an opt-out exception may be appropriate.
Authors of long form outputs (for example: monographs, books, book chapters and edited collections) are encouraged to apply Rights Retention to their post-peer reviewed manuscript.
This should be discussed with prospective publishers. Opting into Rights Retention enables Green OA availability, subject to a suitable embargo and allows authors to apply a creative commons licence to the post peer review manuscript.
As prior notification of long form publishers has not taken place, authors wising to opt into Rights Retention must include the following statement in the cover letter of any proposal or submission and in the acknowledgements section of any resulting manuscript submitted for publication:
- In compliance with the LJMU Research Publications Policy, the author(s) has granted a [insert chosen Creative Commons licence] licence to the copyright and all other rights in the nature of copyright subsisting in any post peer review manuscript arising from this submission. The post peer review manuscript will become publicly accessible [insert length of embargo period where applicable, for example: immediately on / X months from] first online publication.
Authors opting in to Rights Retention must:
- Ensure a record of the long form output is created in Symplectic.
- Deposit a copy of the post-review manuscript in the LJMU Research Online (via Symplectic) and identify any OA terms agreed with the publisher beyond their standard terms and conditions.
Where a publisher declines to accommodate Rights Retention for long form outputs, authors can proceed with publication without asserting this right, providing this does not contravene a funder mandate.
