University Publications Policy

Rights retention enables you to exercise your rights to your manuscripts, to deposit a copy of the Author Accepted Manuscript (AAM) in a repository on publication and provide open access to it. 

Guidance on this page: 

• what the University expects of authors 
• prior notice we have given to publishers 
• how to retain your rights 
• funder policies take precedence 
• opting out of the policy requirements 
• transitional agreements with publishers 
• subscription-only journals without a transitional agreement. 

Rights retention at the University of Leeds

If you are a University of Leeds researcher and you are listed as an author on a research article, review or conference paper, you must retain your rights to your work. This includes articles by postgraduate researchers that are co-authored with staff. 

Other members of the University community – including professional service staff, teaching staff and postgraduate researchers – who also publish research outputs are encouraged to voluntarily opt in and also retain their rights under the publications policy. 

The University has worked with the seven other institutions in the N8 Research Partnership to develop the N8 Rights Retention Statement, which is a key element of the University Publications Policy. 

Prior notice to publishers

Rights retention works by giving notice to any potential publisher that a licence has already been applied to a research output prior to publication. This prior notice ensures a publisher is aware of the terms under which the content has been licensed and can be reused. 

Since June 2023 the University has written to over 130 publishers to give them prior notice of our policy. These publishers are aware that for the purpose of open access, University of Leeds staff and students retain the necessary rights to make the accepted manuscripts of research articles, including reviews and conference papers, publicly available under the terms of a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) licence. 

Go to the list of publishers with prior notice of rights retention. 

Previously (January 2023 to September 2024), per the University Publication Policy , authors retained their rights by including a statement to this effect in the acknowledgement section of the manuscript (or at the end of the manuscript if there were no acknowledgements) and in any accompanying cover letter. From September 2024 it is no longer necessary to include this statement when submitting to most publishers. 

How to retain your rights

When you’re preparing to publish your work, consult the list of publishers with prior notice of rights retention.  

If your target publisher is on the list, then they are aware of our policy. You can publish with them while retaining the rights to your work. 

If your target publisher is not on the list, you must include the following rights retention statement in the acknowledgement section of the manuscript (or at the end of the manuscript if there are no acknowledgements) and in any accompanying cover letter: 

“For the purpose of open access, the author has applied a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) licence to any Author Accepted Manuscript version arising from this submission.” 

In this way you have retained the necessary rights on behalf of the University and given notice to the publisher. It also means you may make the accepted manuscript of the article publicly available under the terms of a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) licence as soon as it is accepted. 

To help you to submit an article with a rights retention statement, cOAlition S has resources that include a pre-submission template and a submission cover letter template. 

Funder policies take precedence

Funder open access policies and funder’s associated rights retention and licensing notification statements take precedence over the University Publication Policy. 

The University cannot override or grant dispensation from funder open access policy requirements. 

UKRI, Wellcome Trust and other cOAlition S funders with a rights retention strategy have their own mandated statements that authors must include to comply with their grant terms and conditions. 

These specific funder-related statements apply to all manuscripts submitted for publication for Wellcome funded research. 

For UKRI funded research their statement is only used when using Route 2 of their open access policy (the "green OA" route).

Opting out of the policy requirements

There may be exceptional circumstances where authors must opt out of the University Publications Policy rights retention requirement. For example, if an article contains substantial material where copyright is held by a third party that cannot be reproduced with a CC BY licence. 

When you deposit your research output in Symplectic you can use the deposit comments box to opt out of the institutional rights retention requirement. 

However, authors cannot opt out of the requirement to deposit full text copies of final accepted peer-reviewed research articles, reviews and conference papers into the institutional repository. 

Please contact our Research Services team as early as possible if you think there are exceptional circumstances that will mean that you cannot apply rights retention. 

Transitional agreements with publishers

As an institution we participate in many transitional open access agreements with publishers. These allow the published version of research outputs to be made open access with a CC BY licence. 

Subscription only journals without a transitional agreement

You might wish to submit your article to a subscription journal not covered by a transitional agreement. In this case, select the subscription publication route at the point of submission, not an open access route, which may incur a fee. 

Some publishers still impose page charges, colour fees and other associated fees for publication. These are separate to open access fees and publishers might require payment before publication. 

Please contact our Research Services team for guidance on any fees.