Summary of the cOAlition S webinar: The Rights Retention Strategy and what it means for EU13 & Associated Countries

At the beginning of 2021, cOAlition S started implementing its Rights Retention Strategy (RRS). This strategy is to give researchers supported by a cOAlition S the freedom to submit manuscripts for publication to their chosen journal, including subscription journals, whilst obeying Plan S principles. It is obligatory for the funded researchers to assign an open (CC BY) license to their accepted manuscripts that protects their intellectual property. This way the researchers are able to reuse and disseminate their work as they see fit. Furthermore, they can deposit a copy of their Author Accepted Manuscript (AAM) without restrain in their chosen repository.

On the 12 April we held a live webinar, organized in partnership with ENYAs in EU13 and Associated Countries: Estonia, Croatia, Latvia, Poland, Romania, Hungary, Albania, Israel, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Norway, Serbia, Turkey and Belarus. The topic of the webinar was: ‘The Rights Retention Strategy and what it means for EU13 and Associated Countries’. 51 participants from various countries joined the live event.

The webinar started with a brief welcome from Chair of YAE, Gemma Modinos. ‘There have been some concerns as to how the information and the implications can really have a transnational reach. So for these reasons we wanted to ensure a focus on young scholars in countries in which the funding ecosystem may not be a straightforward as for those in which there are more organizations endorsing Plan S’ said Modinos.

Johan Rooryck and Sally Rumsay of cOAlition S followed with a presentation where they talked about the principle and key objectives of RRS as well the problem they want to resolve through this strategy. It was discussed in what way authors can benefit from RRS, which incudes ownership and visibility. ‘Authors should retain they rights and own their AAM’ said Rooryck.

The webinar ended with a rich Q&A session, during which several important questions from the audience were discussed.

The full recording of the webinar is available on the YAE’s YouTube channel.