Complying with the Rights Retention Policy

Author's Guidelines

All authors should ensure that their articles comply with the rights retention policy by undertaking the following:

Authors must include the following text in the acknowledgement section of their manuscript and any cover letter/note accompanying the submission:

“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.”

Certain research funders, such as UKRI and the Wellcome Trust, require an alternative worded statement that achieves the same outcome. In these cases, the University of Warwick statement should be replaced with that required by the funder.

University of Warwick authors should ensure that their co-authors are informed that they are subject to the University’s Institutional Rights Retention Policy and agree on a suitable licence before submission. Whilst the Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY 4.0 or newer) licence is strongly encouraged, the University recognises the need for different licences based on funder requirements, such as CC BY NC/ND or the Open Government Licence for research subject to Crown copyright.

Once the article is accepted, authors must upload their accepted manuscript (AAM) with the rights retention statement to WRAP within three months of the first publication date.

List of Publishers

The Library’s Open Research Team maintains a list of publishers informed of this policy on its website.

Please get in touch if you would like to check whether we contacted a particular publisher or if you would like us to notify a publisher that has not already been contacted.

Opting Out

This policy, from 1 October 2025, requires full and immediate open access for in-scope research articles.

The University requires that the Creative Commons Attribution Licence (CC BY) be applied to the open access version of the research output. Complying with this policy will be extremely simple in most cases.

We understand that in some circumstances it may not be possible for authors to meet the requirement for immediate open access upon publication or the assignment of a CC BY licence. In these cases, authors may need to submit an ‘opt-out’ to the policy. The following represents several situations where authors may need to opt out:

• The journal will not publish the output with the Rights Retention Statement intact.
• An author does not have permission to share the accepted manuscript with a CC BY licence immediately on publication because:
  • Co-authors do not respond
  • Co-authors prefer a different license (CC-BY-ND, for example)
  • Co-authors do not want to share the manuscript with CC license at all (prefer to follow publishers’ embargo)
• The article contains a substantial amount of third-party materials, which cannot be licensed under a CC-BY licence and the redaction of third-party materials will compromise the reading of the article.
• The author has already applied for a Wellcome/UKRI licensing exception.

To request an opt-out of the policy:

• Once your article is accepted for publication in your journal of choice, but before final publication, please submit an opt-out form to the Library Team.
• It is possible to submit a request after publication; however, once a paper is publicly available with an open licence, it might not be possible to remove all copies from the Internet.
• The opt-out request can be submitted by the author or by a proxy acting on their behalf.

Request an Opt Out

Please use the form below to request an opt-out for the rights retention policy:

Opt Out Form

When requesting an opt-out

If you choose to opt out of the policy, please note that:

• This action may cause the research output to be non-compliant with funder policies.
• Authors cannot opt out of the requirement for depositing the accepted manuscript into WRAP

If you need assistance or would like to talk through your options, please - Book a Discussion