15 July 2020
cOAlition S has developed a Rights Retention Strategy, which will empower their funded researchers to publish in their journal of choice, including subscription journals, and provide Open Access in compliance with Plan S.
One of the three Plan S routes to achieve full and immediate Open Access is via repositories, where, as a minimum, the Author Accepted Manuscript (AAM) is made openly available under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) licence or equivalent, without any embargo.
The Rights Retention Strategy is designed to ensure that all cOAlition S funded scholarly publications are available as Open Access. In practical terms, it enables researchers to retain sufficient intellectual ownership rights in their work to make the AAM Open Access at the time of publication with a CC BY license.
“The COVID-19 crisis has clearly shown that embargo periods are indefensible. No private or business interests can justify that new and original research results are held back for 6 or 12 months from other scientists, practitioners, governments and authorities, medical staff, patients and patient associations – especially those who are economically disadvantaged, who cannot afford expensive access tolls”, emphasizes Marc Schiltz, President of Science Europe and Chair of the cOAlition S Leaders Group.