Opting out of the Research Publications & Copyright Policy

How to apply for an exception from the immediate open access requirement of the Research Publications & Copyright Policy, or to request a different creative commons licence (e.g. CC BY-ND).

The Research Publications and Copyright Policy, which applies in full from 1 April 2022, requires full and immediate open access for in scope research articles.  The University requires that the Creative Commons Attribution Licence (CC BY) is applied to the open access version of the research output. In the majority of case it will be extremely simple to comply with this policy. However, in exceptional circumstances it will be permissible for staff to voluntarily opt out of the requirement for immediate open access upon publication, or the assignation of a CC BY licence. However, please note:

• 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 in Pure.

Scenarios where it may be appropriate for authors to request an opt out

This is not a comprehensive list, but considerations will be given where:

1. The journal will not publish the output with the Rights Retention Statement intact.

2. 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)

3. The article contains a substantial amount of 3^rd party materials which cannot be licensed with a CC-BY. The redaction of 3^rd party materials will compromise the reading of the article.
4. The author has already applied for a Wellcome/UKRI licensing exception.

How to request an opt-out of the policy:

1. Once your article is accepted for publication in your journal of choice, but before final publication you need to submit a request via this online form:

2.  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 withdraw all copies from the internet.

3. The opt-out request can be submitted either by academic staff or a proxy acting on their behalf.

4. Once a request is submitted the appropriate College/School Pure administrator will be contacted and will progress the application.