University of Lincoln's Rights Retention Strategy
A rights retention policy is a mechanism that lets authors retain the copyright of their author accepted manuscript. From the 1st September 2025, the University of Lincoln is implementing its own rights retention strategy, ensuring that authors can archive their author accepted manuscripts with no embargo and comply with REF and funder policy.
How Does It Work?
For articles accepted on or after 1st September 2025, the university’s rights retention policy enables authors to apply a CC-BY license to their author accepted manuscript, ensuring the manuscript can be made available open access from the point of acceptance. The university has written to a list of publishers across the sector to notify them of Lincoln’s Rights Retention policy. This is standard practice across the HE sector and the majority of UK HEI’s now have a similar policy. The rights retention policy will be automatically applied by the repository team when you deposit your manuscript in the university’s repository. A list of publishers that the university has notified can be found by using this link.
What’s the benefit?
Without the policy, publishers can claim the copyright to your author accepted manuscript. This is done via a Copyright Transfer Agreement that is signed during the submission process. If copyright is signed over, publishers can restrict how you use your author accepted manuscript and may impose a lengthy post publication embargo. They can also restrict the licensing terms on which you can share your manuscript. This often makes it more difficult to adhere to REF and funder policy. The university’s rights retention policy, however, supersedes any Copyright Transfer Agreement, allowing you to freely distribute your manuscript under a terms of a CC-BY license without embargo, maximising the reach of your research and ensuring compliance with REF and funder policy.
More Guidance and information about Rights Retention can be found below:
If you are publishing with a publisher on the list of those notified, you do not need to include a statement — just deposit your manuscript in the normal way. If you are publishing with a publisher who hasn’t been notified, contact the Library who will arrange notification.
When you submit, it’s best to include a rights retention statement with the following wording:
“For the purposes of open access, the author has applied a Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) licence to any Accepted Author Manuscript version arising from this submission.”
Why has the University of Lincoln implemented a Rights Retention Policy?
The policy ensures work produced at the university is freely accessible and gains a wide readership. This helps maximise research impact and ensures policy compliance.
The policy ensures authors retain the copyright to their accepted manuscript, under the proviso that they allow a Creative Commons Attribution License (CC-BY) to be applied to their manuscript. This is done by the repository team upon deposit and allows the manuscript to be deposited within the repository within embargo from the point of acceptance. Crucially, however, copyright resides with the author rather than the university.
What happens when I submit my article?
When you submit your article, you can check to see whether the university has notified your publisher. You can find a list of publishers that we have notified here. If the publisher has been notified, just submit your manuscript in the usual manner and deposit to the repository on acceptance who will apply a Creative Commons Attribution License and make your manuscript open access.
If your publisher hasn’t been notified, get in touch with the Library who can notify them. Still submit your manuscript, but it’s best to include a rights retention statement with the following wording:
“For the purposes of open access, the author has applied a Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) licence to any Accepted Author Manuscript version arising from this submission.”
Does the Rights Retention policy restrict where I can publish?
In short, no it doesn’t. If there are any problems publishing in your choice of journal, get in touch with the Library or see our ‘exceptions’ FAQ below.
Yes, if you need to opt out of the rights retention policy for any reason there is the choice of an opt out. If you choose this, however, your research may not be compliant with REF or funder policy. For more information, please contact the repository team explaining why you are electing to opt out.
What kind of research does the policy apply to?
The policy applies to journal articles and conference proceedings accepted on or after 1st September 2025.
What about multi-author papers?
For multi-author papers, make sure you inform the corresponding author about our rights retention strategy. All authors will benefit from open access deposit in the University’s repository. If it is not possible for you to follow the policy, contact the repository team explaining why you are electing to opt out.
What if I wish to submit my article to a publisher that is not on the list of those notified?
Please contact the library research team at researchlibrarian@lincoln.ac.uk.
