Rights Retention Strategy

Starting from 2021, cOAlitionS funders such as NWO and European Commission (Horizon Europe) require immediate Open Access with a CC-BY license to all peer-reviewed scholarly publications. To meet those requirements, researchers have 3 options: to use one of the national Read & Publish agreements, publish in an Open Access venue and pay from the grant budget or make use of the Rights Retention Strategy (RRS) – a Plan S compliant Green Open Access route.

RRS allows authors to share their work in the final author's version (Author Accepted Manuscript) immediately and under a CC BY license, even if the publisher places restrictions on this. To do this, researchers must indicate to the publisher upon submission of publication that they are bound by a "previous contract" from a funder.

RRS has been widely used by Wellcome Trust and embedded within UK universities. The Netherlands, too, made a step further in supporting researchers and in 2022, UNL has agreed to warrant legal and financial support for authors who provide Open Access to their PlanS-funded publications with the use of the RRS. This means that Dutch researchers that cannot make use of the Gold Open Access option or a Read & Publish agreement, can use the RRS route while having support on the national level.

UKB Working Group Open Access has developed a guiding FAQ with the aim to support researchers at Dutch universities complying with the Open Access requirements of PlanS and willing to make use of the RRS.