When taking the Green route to open access (OA), journals often require an Author’s Accepted Manuscript (AAM) be embargoed for a time. Adding a Rights Retention statement and a CC BY licence to an article allows an author to avoid the embargo by clearly differentiating their work from the final published version, thereby keeping ownership of their work.  

In some cases, research funders require you to use rights retention to ensure a version of your publication is made immediately available open access. You can find out more about this within our information on complying with funders' policies.

More details can be found on the Library's open access information pages.