Rights Retention and our updated Institutional Publications Policy
The University of Manchester has updated its Publications Policy as part of its commitment to more open and reproducible research.
The University has worked collectively with the other institutions in the N8 Research Partnership to develop a new N8 Rights Retention Statement.
Policy updates
Under this consortium-wide agreement each university is updating their publication policy to support authors to retain more intellectual property rights in their research articles.
With the launch of the University's new policy on 1 March 2023, authors will retain the right to make a copy of their Author Accepted Manuscript (AAM) immediately Open Access through our institutional repository (Pure) under a CC BY license (Creative Commons Attribution License) irrespective of embargo periods stipulated by publishers.
This will not only mean that authors’ articles are immediately available for all to access, thus extending the potential reach and impact of the research, but it will also make it easier for authors to adhere to the Open Access policies set out by funders.
The N8 Rights Retention Statement is the latest in a growing trend of universities taking steps to support their researchers in retaining the rights in the research that they create. You can find FAQs on the N8's Rights Retention Statement on the N8 website.
You can also watch a recorded presentation on Rights Retention and our updated Institutional Publications Policy.
Benefits for authors
Under such arrangements authors don’t need to take any additional action to benefit from the revised policy. Manchester authors can simply continue to submit articles via the Open Access Gateway or publish articles Gold OA. The majority of articles will still be made Open Access either through one of our various Transformative Agreements or through the payment of Gold OA Article Processing Charges for eligible papers. However, our updated Publications Policy will mean that those papers accepted for publication from 1 March 2023, which are not eligible for paid Open Access, can now be made Open Access via the Green OA route immediately and will not be subject to publisher embargoes.
Authors should contact the Library if a publisher requests transfer of exclusive rights during the publication process.
Find out more
Authors can now check which of their papers have been made Open Access (and how) by using the new Open Research Tracker tool:
You can contact the Library by email at openresearch@manchester.ac.uk to:
- Ask a question about Rights Retention
- Provide feedback on the new policy