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Library Research Support Services

Learn more about options for licencing your work, Creative Commons licencing and enabling open re-use for maximum knowledge gain, whilst ensuring attribution.  Be aware of changing funder & institution positions on signing Copyright Transfer Agreements with publishers.

Is it your work? 

Understanding if you own the copyright to your published works will help you to know how you can licence or share your work.

Different publishing routes & rights retained Examples

pearl icon  If you are publishing the output for the first time through the University of Plymouth's repository, PEARL, the University is the publisher and you will be the rights holder meaning you can choose a suitable Creative Commons re-use licence and share as you wish for maximum visibility.  

Plymouth authors can submit these output types through Pure and the system will ask you choose a CC licence.                                                                

UoP theses; datasets; local reports; preprints etc.  

The Library can mint DOIs for these output types.

This is called Diamond open access publishing.

paywalled copyright iconoa green logo  If your work is behind a paywall on publisher site, any re-publishing, uploading or sharing will need to be within the terms of the publisher's copyright policy as you will have likely signed a Copyright Transfer Agreement and will need to ensure you are not in breach of this.

The publisher .pdf version (final version/version of record) cannot be shared

You cannot usually choose a licence when publishing in this way and will be bound by the terms of the publisher's licence.

Accepted Manuscripts of publisher-owned (paywalled) journal articles, book chapters, conference papers etc.

AAMs can usually only be shared under the publisher's existing licence in authorised repositories (not networking sites) subject to publisher copyright terms e.g. an embargo period.  

This is called Green Open Access publishing.                                       

open access icon  If an Article Processing Charge has been paid for the publication (either invoiced or through a Read & Publish agreement), authors will have bought back the rights to the work and will be the copyright holder (Gold open access).  This means authors can re-publish the publisher's .pdf (final version/version of record) in a repository or anywhere they wish immediately upon publication. 

These outputs should be licenced CC-BY allowing the public permanent re-use and distribution rights.                      

A fee free route to authors retaining rights and licencing the publisher version CC-BY is called Diamond open access: a publishing model where there are no author or reader fees and costs are met through other business models.  Diamond is promoted by researcher funders: find out more here.  

Authors can choose a licence through the publisher manuscript submission system.

Articles, conference papers, book chapters, monographs etc. on the publishers' websites that are fully open access with a permanent re-use licence.

These outputs should state on the publishers' sites that they are copyright of the Authors & show a CC licence for clear public re-use permissions.

This type of open access publishing can be called Gold or Diamond.                                                             

Options for when the publisher owns your work

What is a Copyright Transfer Agreement?

Most publishers will ask authors to sign a Copyright Transfer Agreement (CTA) when you are publishing behind a paywall, assigning copyright from the author(s), in whom it resides by default, to the publisher.  Whilst you retain moral rights, the publisher now has commercial rights and this can prevent you from sharing this particular version of your work.

Why are views to CTAs changing?

  • When the publisher has the rights to your work, they can profit from selling the work in various ways including repackaging or sub-licencing, whilst the creator of the work is left with none or few rights to that version. 
  • Authors without rights to their work may not be permitted to translate to another language or format (Braille).
  • Authors may find that signing the CTA leaves them unable to use their work in teaching (e.g. if their library does not subscribe to the journal, the article may have to be bought as a copyright-cleared digitisation for a reading list).
  • Funders requiring immediate open access are hampered by CTAs that only permit delayed (embargoed) open access of the Accepted Manuscript in repositories when the publisher version is behind a paywall.

 

What exists in place of CTAs?

For fully Gold open access works, the author pays to retain copyright and distribute the work open immediately upon publication, instead of signing a CTA.  These works are openly licenced for maximum re-use. 

However, for paywalled articles, there are other ways to retain your rights, enable open & immediate re-use yet allow the publisher to publish & distribute your work in the traditional way:

  • Publishers do not need all the rights in order to distribute your work and protect it: some forward-thinking publishers operate a Licence to Publish instead of a CTA e.g. Royal Society of Chemistry
  • SPARC have provided an Author Addendum template where authors, as copyright holders of the submitted manuscript, can offer publishers a Licence to Publish in place of full transfer of rights.  
  • Rights Retention policies and statements are increasingly being adopted by funders and institutions.  

 

Benefits of retaining rights

When authors are able to retain their rights, they can apply an open licence (such as Creative Commons) to the work and make it immediately open access with no embargos, even the Accepted Manuscript version of the paywalled publisher version.  Retaining rights in this way is increasingly becoming a matter of compliance for research funders.

Open licences enable other people to reuse the content and make it really clear and easy for other people to understand what they are (and are not) allowed to do with the material.

Plan S Author Rights Quiz opens in new window

What is Rights Retention?

A number of funders, including UKRI, NIHR, Horizon Europe and Wellcome Trust, have incorporated Rights Retention requirements into their Open Access policies, in order to ensure that authors retain the rights to make manuscripts of paywalled articles immediately open at the point of publication with zero embargos.  This aligned with the principles of Plan S.

Rights Retention is achieved by including a statement on your manuscript when you submit it to the publisher such as: 
“For the purpose of open access, the author has applied a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) licence to any Author Accepted Manuscript version of this paper, arising from this submission.”


The University of Plymouth is currently exploring options for RRS.  The Library Research Support Services team would be happy to hear your thoughts and questions on Rights Retentions.  Please contact your Information Specialist or email openresearch@plymouth.ac.uk

plan S rights retention poster: "it's in your power to make sure that your publications are freely access - publish with power"

 

“Be a responsible steward of your intellectual property. Retain vital rights for you and your readers while authorizing publishing activities that benefit everyone by making scholarship more widely available.”

 Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC)

How can I share my published work?

Whilst it is common for academics to share their publications via academic social networking sites like Research Gate, this is subject to the publisher’s permissions and that posting the final published version will likely be a breach of the publisher's copyright, especially if that publisher's version is behind a paywall.

Both services are commercial companies. Although Academia.edu has a “.edu” URL, it isn’t run by a higher education institution. The domain name was registered before the rules that would now prohibit this use went into effect.  Work you upload for free is then sold on at profit.

You are responsible for ensuring any files you post are within the specific copyright agreement that you have signed with the publisher in question. Jisc's Open Policy FInder tool is a helpful tool for checking publisher policies on article sharing.

You can also email openresearch@plymouth.ac.uk for advice on whether or not you can add a particular version to sites such as ResearchGate. 

It is important to note that sites such as ResearchGate are not repositories, and uploading a pre-print to these sites does not meet the criteria for UoP or REF Open Access policies. Please visit our guidance on REF: Act on Acceptance for advice on depositing your work in PEARL via Pure.

Publishers and RG

There have been lawsuits filed by publishers against RG and now settled in recent years.  RG and publishers are finding a way to co-exist but these relationships are in the interests of maximising profits for both, not open access.  You may find that your publisher will share your work on RG for you but it will not be under a re-usable licence and is likely to be view-online only, not downloadable.

Different licences you can choose when you are the copyright holder

Creative commons logoCreative Commons

Creative Commons Licences are a type of machine readable open licence which you can apply to your copyrighted work making it extremely clear how your work can or cannot be re-used.  Benefits include:

  • Your work is more discoverable. The Creative Commons licenses are machine readable and search engines can communicate to their users how your work can be used and re-used.
  • Your work is more accessible. The Creative Commons licenses decrease financial barriers to access and allow more people to read and use your work.
  • Others can use and build on your work (but you retain copyright). By applying a Creative Commons license, you are making your work available for others to more easily use and re-use within the terms you have permitted.
  • You don't have to handle individual permissions requests. Users can look at the Creative Commons license you have applied in order to determine what they can do with your work. If the license permits their intended use, they don't need to seek further permission from you.

There are six different Creative Commons license types with standard icons ranging from most to least permissive:

Open Government Licence

OGL logo

Open Government Licence (OGL) The OGL is a licence developed by the National Archives as a tool to enable information providers in the public sector (UK government bodies) to share work for re-use.  It is similar to CC-BY in design and applied to work which are 'Crown copyrighted' in the following ways on the condition that due acknowledgement and attribution is provided.:

  •  ‘copy, publish, distribute and transmit the Information’

  • ‘adapt the Information’

  • ‘exploit the Information commercially and non-commercially for example, by combining it with other Information, or by including it in your own product or application’

Software licences

There are a number of ways that researchers using software are sharing their work:Open Source Initiative

  • The Open Source Initiative  describes the main Open Source licenses for software.
  • 'Copyleft' is a term used in software licencing and is similar to CC-BY-SA and endeavours to release software free from concerns of it being made proprietary.
  • Choose a Licence is a tool created by the software community