New Research Publications Policy to include rights retention section

From 1 December 2025 the university will be implementing a new Research Publications Policy. This policy replaces the LJMU Open Access Publishing Policy and now includes a section on rights retention.

What is rights retention?

Rights retention refers to you as the author retaining key rights to your work, specifically your author accepted manuscripts (AAMs) which means it can be made available in the university’s institutional repository, LJMU Research Online, on publication with no embargo.

What are the benefits of rights retention?

Rights retention provides academic freedom and control.

It enables you to submit manuscripts for publication to your preferred subscription or hybrid journal, whilst retaining rights over your author accepted manuscript, which means your work can be more widely disseminated and you are able to comply with funder (and REF) policies.

What does this mean at LJMU?

You retain the copyright to your author accepted manuscript and in return grant the university the right to make this version available upon publication in LJMU Research Online without embargo under a  Creative Commons Attribution Licence (CC BY). 

Rights retention will apply to peer reviewed articles and conference papers published with an ISSN as a default unless the author opts out. There are a limited number of circumstances under which you can opt out, and full details are available on the rights retention webpage.

Information session on Friday 21 November 2025

The Library will be delivering an online information session highlighting the details of the new policy on Friday 21 November from 10am to 11am. 

Book using the events calendar - there will be time in the session to answer any questions you may have.

For more help and information see the rights retention webpages or email the Open Research team.