Visit the Rights Retention webpage to find out more.

The Exeter Institutional Rights Retention Policy applies to articles and conference papers submitted for publication in journals or conference proceedings (with an ISSN), these output types must include the Rights Retention statement at submission.

Other output types, such as book chapters or monographs are not currently covered by the policy. However, authors of such output types may choose to use Rights Retention if they wish to do so. You can do this by including the set text at submission notifying the publisher that any accepted manuscript version that might arise is already licensed with CC BY: “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"

Contact the Open Research team to discuss how you can use Rights Retention for other output types that are not covered by the policy.

Whilst a publisher is under no obligation to consider a manuscript containing a rights retention declaration, they should decline to publish such articles at the earliest possible opportunity and allow you to submit to another journal. This is why it is crucial to include the declaration in the cover letter and manuscript from the point of submission. For articles where compliance with the policy is not possible, an opt out is available.

The publisher may have misunderstood what you are asking, reiterate that the CC BY licence applies to the accepted manuscript version, you are not asking to publish the final published version open access on the publisher website (for which a fee often applies).

If the publisher understands that the CC BY licence applies to the accepted manuscript version only, they should not charge a fee for making your accepted manuscript available under CC BY licence, you retain the rights to do this without any payment to the publisher. If not publishing in a fully open access journal or through a publisher agreement that the University has signed, authors must choose the subscription publication route instead of the open access route as institutional open access funds will not support publication charges in hybrid journals. 

By including the set text “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" at submission, you are notifying the publisher at submission that any future accepted manuscript is licensed with CC BY. As you have notified the publisher of the CC BY licence on the accepted manuscript at submission, they should not subsequently ask you to sign a publishing agreement that is in conflict with this e.g. by imposing an embargo on the accepted manuscript or not allowing CC BY.

Publishers may offer a different publishing agreement to authors who are covered by a Rights Retention policy. If you are asked to sign a Copyright Transfer Agreement (sometimes called a copyright assignment) that conflicts with the University Rights Retention policy, please contact the Open Research team. The Rights Retention statement should take precedence, and signing such an agreement will affect your and the University’s use of the copyright.  

Many funders now require their funded authors to include Rights Retention statements in manuscript submissions; many other institutions also have Rights Retention policies in place. When your manuscript is covered by multiple Rights Retention policies i.e. funder or institutional, you do not need to include the statement multiple times. It is only necessary to include it once, you can use any variation of wording providing the meaning is retained.

If you forgot to include the Rights Retention statement in your manuscript submission, please contact the Open Research team to check if the publisher has been contacted in advance. If they have not, you should contact the journal office as soon as possible to let them know of your intentions to retain your copyright. If the publisher does not accept it, you may consider opting out of this policy.  

All authors will need to agree to the CC BY licence, or a similar one as specified in this policy, for each paper published. This should be agreed prior to submission and the rights retention wording included in the submitted manuscript. If agreement is not obtained, please consider opting out of the policy on that occasion.  

Please include the declaration at the point of submission and ensure it is not removed before publication. After acceptance, upload your accepted manuscript (containing the Rights Retention statement) via Symplectic to ORE.

For articles with third -party copyright material, please clearly indicate within the manuscript the terms under which the material is released and state that the CC-BY licence is not applicable to this material. If the article contains significant third-party content which cannot be licensed as CC-BY, and the redaction of which would compromise the integrity of the article, consider opting-out. For more information about using third party owned content, see the Copyright Toolkit.

The University recognizes that complex situations may arise where compliance with the policy is challenging. In such cases, staff members can voluntarily opt out of the requirement for immediate open access or the assignment of a CC BY licence in respect of a specific submission.

However, opting out may result in non-compliance with funder policies and render the research output ineligible for submission to a REF exercise. The Open Research team is available to support authors if they are uncertain about the impact opting out may have on meeting funder’s requirements. Authors can select the "opt-out" option in the Symplectic record when depositing and contact the Open Research team to provide publication details. Or, email the Open Research team to opt out.

UKRI encourage authors and publishers to make outputs open access within 12 months of publication, where possible, however UKRI policy includes an exception for when a contract has been signed between the author and the publisher before 1st January 2024 that prevents adherence to the policy.

Notify the publisher about UKRI open access requirements that apply to your long form output at the earliest opportunity, so that you can work together to establish whether they offer a UKRI-compliant publishing option. It is recommended that you do this when you first submit your proposal to the publisher, and certainly before entering into any contractual agreement.

You should establish how your output will comply with UKRI open access requirements for long form outputs before entering into any contractual agreement with the publisher. Notify the publisher about UKRI OA requirements that apply to your long-form output when you submit your proposal to the publisher.

Contact the Open Research team to confirm your route to compliance before entering into any contractual agreement, we can help you ensure your output complies.

UKRI are providing dedicated funds to support immediate open access publication with a Creative Commons licence of the version of record of a long form output on the publisher website or publishing platform. This will be a centralised OA monograph fund, held by UKRI, that institutions will apply to. Contact the Open Research team if you need to apply for funding to publish open access.

If you need to apply for funding to pay to publish OA in compliance with UKRI OA policy, the Open Research team will submit an application to UKRI on your behalf. We will register your output with UKRI and obtain confirmation if it's eligible for UKRI to pay. This must be done before entering into contractual agreement with the publisher, before committing to publishing open access and before committing to paying any OA publishing fee.

After UKRI have confirmed your output is eligible for reimbursement, you can go ahead and select the immediate open access publishing option (with Creative Commons licence) and request an invoice for the publishing fee using a Purchase Order number and billing details provided by the Open Research team. The invoice should be sent to us at the University. We will pay the invoice for the publishing fee then after your output is published OA we will notify UKRI of its OA publication and seek reimbursement from UKRI of the costs they agreed to pay.

UKRI will pay a maximum of £8,333 + VAT (£10,000 inc VAT) or a single monograph or edited collection, or £833 + VAT (£1,000 inc VAT) for a chapter.

If your chosen publisher charges more than this, advise them of UKRI's maximum and ask them to reduce the cost to the maximum UKRI will pay.

UKRI open access monograph fund opens for applications in November 2023.

You must apply for funding to pay to publish your long form output open access (OA) before entering into any contractual agreement with the publisher, before committing to publish OA and before committing to pay any publishing fees.

Contact the Open Research team at the earliest possible opportunity if you need to apply for funding to publish OA, we will apply to the UKRI OA monograph fund on your behalf. We cannot commit to paying the publishing fee until we have registered your output with UKRI and UKRI have confirmed it's eligible for reimbursement from the UKRI OA monograph fund.

We can only pay your publishing fee after we have registered your output with UKRI and obtained confirmation from UKRI that it's eligible for payment from the UKRI OA monograph fund. Please do not enter into any contractual agreement with the publisher, or commit to paying any publishing fees, until we have made an application to UKRI on your behalf and obtained confirmation that UKRI will pay.

You do not need to publish open access on the publisher website to comply with UKRI policy. You can also comply by depositing a copy of your output in a repository and providing open access to it there not longer than 12 months after publication. The version that is deposited could be the "author's accepted manuscript" or final published version and it must be made available with one of the Creative Commons licences. Creative Commons Attribrution Licence CC BY (only) is preferred, but more restrictive CC BY licences are also permitted (e.g. -NC, -ND). Check with the publisher if they will permit you to deposit your Author's Accepted Manuscript in a repository under these terms. No fee is payable for doing this.

You may not need to pay to publish your monograph open access (OA). "Diamond" business models publish outputs in OA without author fees to read or publish. Other models use membership or subscription income to fund OA publication, so authors do not need to pay publishing fees.

If there is a fee to pay, these can vary widely between publishers. The typical open access "book processing charge" with Open Book Publishers (for authors who have funds available to pay this) is £5,000, this covers the costs of producing and marketing the book (but authors without funds to pay are not prevented from publishing). OA book publishing fees with some publishers can be as much as £12,000 + VAT (or higher).

UKRI will pay a maximum of £8,333 + VAT (£10,000 inc VAT) for a long form output and £830 + VAT (£1,000 inc VAT) for a book chapter.

If your chosen publisher charges more than this, please inform them of the maximum your funder will pay and ask them to reduce the cost.

UKRI open access (OA) requirements apply to all in-scope long form outputs (monographs, book chapters, edited collections) and you should seek a compliant publishing option where possible. Check if your publisher offers a compliant open access publishing or self-archiving option. If they do not offer this as standard, let them know about UKRI requirements and ask if they can offer you a compliant publishing option as an exception. Find more details in Annex 3 of UKRI OA policy.

Exemptions to the UKRI OA policy for long form outputs are available, which can be used in specific circumstances, only after defined steps have been taken and efforts have been made to seek a compliant OA option. If you think you might need to use a policy exemption, contact the Open Research team before entering into any contractual agreement with the publisher, to discuss your options. We can ensure all relevant steps have been taken before the exemption is applied.

UKRI open access policy requires open access to all in-scope monographs, book chapters and edited collections and you should therefore seek a publishing option that meets the requirements of UKRI OA policy wherever possible, prior to considering applying for an exemption.

The process for managing exemptions is still being finalised. It is expected that exemptions can only be applied following liaison and discussion with the Open Research team, to ensure all relevant steps have been taken to try to reach a compliant publishing option first, before the exemption is applied. We anticipate that exemptions will be recorded and monitored by the Open Research team, we may need to report on these to UKRI.

Details of the process for managing exemptions will be confirmed in Autumn 2023, following further information from UKRI.

If you think you might need an exemption to the policy for your in-scope long form output, contact the Open Research team at the earliest opportunity to discuss your options. Policy exemptions must be agreed with the Open Research team prior to entering into any contractual agreement with the publisher.

We are not legal experts and unfortunately cannot provide advice on publishing contracts.

We can, however, help to determine if the open access publishing option offered by your chosen publisher is compliant with UKRI policy. Contact us at the earliest opportunity to discuss your options (before entering into any contractual agreement with the publisher). We can help ensure your output complies and guide you through the workflow for paying to publish open access, or depositing in a repository, depending which route to compliance you take.

"Training grants" include grants for studentships and funding specifically for the training and development of researchers.

Research articles and conference papers arising from Training Grants must comply with UKRI open access (OA) policy. If they are required to acknowledge funding from UKRI, then they are in scope.

Monographs, book chapters and edited collections arising from Training Grants may be exempt. Open access is not required for long-form outputs arising from UKRI training grants, where the training grant is the only UKRI funding source acknowledged. Where possible, UKRI expects Research Organisations to support researchers to make such outputs OA; however, UKRI recognises that publication may occur sometime beyond the lifetime of a training grant.

Theses - requirements for the publication of theses in the UKRI Standard Terms and Conditions of Training Grants still apply. 

Contact the Open Research team for help.

You are free to publish in any journal you choose, providing UKRI's open access requirements are met. This includes:

• publish in a full open access (OA) journal [listed in DOAJ] - funds are available to pay, contact Open Research at submission to apply for funds
• publish open access in a journal included in a Transformative Agreement that the University signed up to, when you are corresponding author, OA publication has already been paid for
• publish not-OA in a subscription or hybrid journal (no publishing fees will be paid) and make your accepted manuscript OA with CC BY licence immediately upon publication, in a repository ('repository route')

Always include UKRI's set text in article submissions - in the manuscript acknowledgements section and in any covering letter: ‘For the purpose of open access, the author has applied a CC BY public copyright licence to any Author Accepted Manuscript version arising'. (where permitted by UKRI, ‘Open Government Licence’ or ‘CC BY-ND public copyright licence’ may be stated instead) 

Check compliance before submitting using Journal Checker Tool. If your chosen journal does not offer a compliant publishing option, contact the publisher to explain your funder requirements and ask if they can offer a compliant publishing option. If the publisher is unable to offer a compliant publishing option, contact the Open Research team for advice or consider submitting elsewhere.

Check compliance of journals with new UKRI open access policy using Journal Checker Tool. This will show you if it's:

• a full open access journal with CC BY licence, eligible for central UKRI funds
• a journal included in a Transformative Agreement that the University signed up to - when you are corresponding author, you can publish open access at no extra cost, as it has already been paid for
• a journal that offers a compliant self-archiving option
• a hybrid journal that offers OA with CC BY but is not in a transforamtive arrangement - in this case it's not eligible for UKRI funds

We recommend submitting to journals that are compliant with UKRI OA policy via the first three routes above. If you wish to submit to a hybrid journal that's not in any transformative arrangement, we cannot pay the APC using UKRI funds. Make sure you include UKRI's set text (see FAQ above) in your submission and in the first instance, seek a compliant self-archiving option from the publisher. If they do not agree, contact us to discuss your options.

UKRI open access block grant (OABG) is administered by the Open Research team. This can be used to pay Article Processing Charges (APCs) in full OA journals. If you are publishing in a journal that's included in a Transformative Agreement, you can publish open access without APCs, as it has already been paid for.

UKRI no longer pay APCs for hybrid journals without any transformative arrangement; UKRI no longer paper other publication charges, such as page or colour charges.

To pay an APC from UKRI OABG, lead or corresponding author must meet the affiliation eligibility criteria. Contact us to discuss when this does not apply, we can consider paying APCs in full OA journals when the lead / corresponding author is not affiliated if the fee must be paid to publish and no OA funds are available from lead / corresponding author institution.

If a journal is not full open access and not in any transformative arrangement, we cannot pay the open access publishing fee (or other publication charges) using UKRI funds. You will need to select the subscription (not open access) publishing option and comply by uploading the accepted manuscript via Symplectic for immediate open access in ORE with a CC BY licence.

Ensure you include UKRI's set text in your submission: ‘For the purpose of open access, the author has applied a CC BY public copyright licence to any Author Accepted Manuscript version arising' (where permitted by UKRI, ‘Open Government Licence’ or ‘CC BY-ND public copyright licence’ may be stated instead). Check the publishing contract before signing to ensure there is no conflict with new UKRI open access policy. You may wish to contact the publisher before submission to advise of your funder obligations.

If the research being published was funded by UKRI and your output is within scope of the policy, it must be made open access in line with UKRI's requirements. If you hold UKRI funding but you are not the corresponding author, you will need to discuss your funder obligations with your co authors and the corresponding author, to ensure the output is published compliantly - it's a good idea to do this before submission, so you can be certain the journal you are submitting to offers a compliant publishing option.

To access Exeter's central open access funds e.g. to publish in a full open access journal, lead or corresponding author must meet the affiliation eligibility criteria. If the lead / corresponding author are affiliated with another institution, please approach that institution to apply for open access funding.

To publish open access through Transformative Agreements, corresponding author must meet the affiliation eligibility criteria. If the corresponding author is affiliated with another institution, you may be able to publish open access through that institution's publishing agreement. If the corresponding author is not affiliated with an institution that has a Transformative Agreement in place, you cannot publish open access at no cost and it's unlikely we will be able to pay the open access publishing fee. In this case, you will need to rely upon the 'repository route' to open access - uploading the accepted manuscript to ORE for immediate CC BY open access there. Ensure you include UKRI's set text upon submission ‘For the purpose of open access, the author has applied a CC BY public copyright licence (where permitted by UKRI, ‘Open Government Licence’ or ‘CC BY-ND public copyright licence’ may be stated instead) to any Author Accepted Manuscript version arising'. Check the publishing contract before signing (or liaise with the corresponding author who will be signing on your behalf) to ensure there is no conflict with UKRI open access policy.

Ensure you include UKRI's set text in all article submissions: 'For the purpose of open access, the author has applied a CC BY public copyright licence to any Author Accepted Manuscript version arising' (where permitted by UKRI, ‘Open Government Licence’ or ‘CC BY-ND public copyright licence’ may be stated instead)

If a publisher rejects your submission based on the inclusion of UKRI's set text and the journal does not offer a compliant open access publishing option, consider publishing elsewhere.

If a publisher has accepted your submission with the statement included, they should allow you to make your author's accepted manuscript open access in a repository under a CC BY licence to comply via Route 2 of UKRI’s policy. If the publisher subsequently refuses to permit this, contact the Open Research team.

In-scope publications that are required to acknowledge UKRI funding must comply with the policy, even if they are only partly UKRI funded or if they are published with co-authors who are not UKRI funded. As a UKRI funded researcher, you will need to be clear on funder requirements that you are subject to when agreeing collaborations, ensure that UKRI funding is acknowledged on the paper including UKRI's set text (see FAQ above) and published in compliance with UKRI policy with a compliant licence.

While a CC BY licence is appropriate in most cases, UKRI may permit, on a case-by-case basis, the use of a more restrictive Creative Commons Attribution No-derivatives (CC BY-ND) licence for the open access version of a research article. Apply for an exception using this form, then submit the form by email to UKRI at openaccess@funding.ukri.org. Allow ten working days for a response from UKRI. Please include openaccess@exeter.ac.uk in 'cc' to the exception request email, or as an additional email contact on the ND exception request form. This helps the Open Reseach team when monitoring compliance to keep track of ND exceptions that have been granted by UKRI. If we come across your published article with CC BY-ND licence and we are not aware of an exception having been granted, we may get in touch to check that the appropriate process was followed before selecting the No-derivatives licence.

UKRI open access policy allows CC BY-ND licence for open access monongraphs, without any exception needed.

The new UKRI open access policy applies to peer-reviewed journal articles including reviews and conference papers accepted to a journal, conference proceedings (with an ISSN) or publishing platform that are submitted for publication on or after 1st April 2022. This refers to the date of first submission to the publisher.

Open Research Exeter (ORE) is the University of Exeter’s institutional repository for storing, preserving and providing access to the research outputs of the institution. ORE is integrated with Symplectic, the University's Current Research Information System (CRIS).

All research publications produced by University of Exeter researchers should be made available in ORE, providing a showcase for the University's research activity.

An embargo is a period of time following publication before an output can be made available as open access in a repository such as ORE. Many publishers allow you to upload your accepted manuscript to a repository, but they may require than an embargo is applied. Upload upon acceptance, Open Research will apply the embargo as part of the process of checking your upload before approving to ORE. The embargo will run from the date of publication and lift automatically once the embargo period has passed.

An embargo often applies to the accepted manuscript. Always upload upon acceptance.

If your article has not yet been published, we will apply a temporary indefinite embargo, then revisit it upon publication to add metadata including DOI and a link to the publisher version. We will also set the publisher embargo, which runs from the date of publication and will lift automatically once the period has passed.

Check individual journal policies using SHERPA/RoMEO. If the journal embargo period for the accepted manuscript exceeds the maximum allowed by your funder, you may need to pay for open access.

Please upload all of your University of Exeter research outputs via Symplectic to ORE.

Publishing open access with CC BY licence on the publisher website meets the requirements of most funders, the University and REF open access policies, so in this case you do not also need to upload to ORE.

You only need to upload your open access papers to ORE if you are funded by a funder that requires them to be deposited in a repository in addition to publishing open access, i.e. Horizon Europe.

If your paper is "free access" on the publisher website (freely available but without a Creative Commons licence), this is not compliant with REF or funders, so you still need to upload the accepted manuscript version to ORE, within three months of acceptance.

Most funders, including Horizon Europe, NIHR, UKRI and the Wellcome Trust will no longer pay other publication costs such as page charges, colour, figure or excess length charge. We recommend seeking a publishing option that does not incur these types of costs, or requesting a waiver from the publisher.

To publish open access in journals included in publisher Transformative Agreements, corresponding author must must meet the affiliation eligibility criteria.

In order for us to pay an open access publishing fee using our central open access funds, lead / corresponding author must meet the affiliation eligibility criteria.

If the lead / corresponding author is not affiliated with University of Exeter, please apply to the current institution / organisation of the lead / corresponding author for open access funding. If the lead / corresponding author has no open access funding and the open access fee is mandatory to publish e.g. in a fully open access journal, you are welcome to contact us to discuss whether the fee can be paid using the University of Exeter's open access funds, we will consider such requests on a case by case basis.

Be wary of publishers that email you, inviting you to submit. Exercise caution, in case this is a Predatory Publisher.

We suggest using Think, Check Submit to ascertain whether this is a journal that you wish to publish in, especially if the publisher is charging a fee to publish your work.

If the publisher is inviting / commissioning you to write a specific piece, we recommend agreeing with the publisher that it will be published open access at no extra cost, as part of agreeing to write the piece.