You are strongly advised to read the terms of any agreement you sign when publishing your work, and ensure it does not conflict with any funder open access requirements that may apply to you.
When publishing open access, you will usually be required to select a licence which specifies how the paper can be re-used.
Creative Commons licences
Open access publications often use a Creative Commons (CC) licence, and funders often specify a Creative Commons Attribution Licence (CC-BY). Authors retain their moral rights and must be credited.
Rights Retention
The Plan S rights retention strategy aims to allow authors to publish in their journal of choice even if it is not Fully OA or under a Transformative Agreement. It works by ensuring that authors or their institutions retain their right to use their AAM as they please, including depositing it in an open access repository under a CC BY licence immediately.
Plan S have given notice to publishers that authors acknowledging cOAlition S organisation funding retain the right to use and share their AAM and that at a minimum the AAM will be published with a CC BY licence and no embargo. Authors are also required to confirm that notice on submission so that there is certainty the publisher has been informed. Furthermore, Plan S and Wellcome have recently amended their guidance to advise that authors should not sign a copyright transfer/ publishing agreement which conflicts with the OA requirements of their funder.
We recommend that authors seeking to comply with their funder via the Rights Retention route contact Library Services prior to submission so that we can provide advice on meeting these requirements.