(Episode 111) Project Retain: open access and rights retention policies across Europe

Intro / outro [: 00:00:04

Welcome to the Research Culture Uncovered podcast, where in every episode we explore what is research culture and what should it be. You'll hear thoughts and opinions from a range of contributors to help you change research culture into what you want it to be.

Nick Sheppard [: 00:00:23

Hello, it's Nick, Open Research Advisor, based in the library here at the University of Leeds, with another open Research themed episode of Research Culture Uncovered. I'm very pleased today to be joined by two guests to talk about an issue that may not be that familiar to colleagues outside the library or that don't work in open access, but that is increasingly important in moving the sector to full, sustainable open access, both in the UK and as we'll here across Europe. So that's something called rights retention and we'll go into exactly what that means and why it's important in some detail over the next half hour or so. But first to ask my guests to introduce themselves. I'm joined by Iva Melinščak Zlodi and Jon Treadway from Project Retain, which has run in a couple of phases, I think, and which has published the second of two reports very recently in March 2025 as we're recording. So, hello, Iva and Jon, and welcome to Research Culture Uncovered.

Iva Melinščak Zlodi [: 00:01:14

Hello.

Jon Treadway [: 00:01:15

Hi. Thanks, Nick. Thanks for having us.

Nick Sheppard [: 00:01:18

So perhaps first I can just ask you to introduce yourselves and your respective organisations and to tell us a little bit about the project. I'll come to first, Jon, perhaps?

Jon Treadway [: 00:01:27

Yeah, sure. So I'm the...well, in Project Retain, I'm responsible for much of the field work and the data gathering and documentation the project overseen in the main by Sparc Europe. And I'm a freelance consultant. I've done quite a bit of work with Sparc Europe over the years. I work for an entity called Great Northwood Consulting and we do lots of different work around strategy and business models and policy for organizations in the research sector and creative industries. So some organizations in the Arts, and that involves quantitative and qualitative analysis and then trying to make things as practical and actionable as possible for people. I wear many different hats for many organizations that will be familiar to some of the people listening to this, I'm sure.

Nick Sheppard [: 00:02:17

Great, thank you. And Iva.

Iva Melinščak Zlodi [: 00:02:19

Okay, thank you. So my...the response to the question of how I got to the project is quite short. So I am a member of the board of Sparc Europe for several years now and currently the chair of the board. So I joined the project as Sparc Europe was leading it. But then if I want to answer of how I got interested in write retention and copyright and open licensing, then I have a little bit longer answer. So I have a library background and I've got into the open access and open science issues a very long time ago and realized that actually copyright issues and are often the main obstacle. And there's a lot of uncertainties about open licensing and what does it mean and how can we use them.

Iva Melinščak Zlodi [: 00:03:16

So that's how. And I guess that many librarians become copyright experts by accident. So that's also my story.

Jon Treadway [: 00:03:26

Yeah, I also become a copyright expert to the extent that I am a copyright expert, but by accident. It wasn't something I intended.

Nick Sheppard [: 00:03:33

Well, I mean, because obviously I'm still reluctant to refer to myself as an expert, actually, because it is an area that's quite complex and obviously I come across it a lot in my job as working in the library and in the context of open access. But perhaps you can just give us a sort of overview of this concept of rights retention and how it relates to copyright and open licensing, those concepts you've already mentioned.

Iva Melinščak Zlodi [: 00:03:55

Okay. So when we speak of right retention, we mainly assume that authors of scholarly work retain enough rights of copyright to be able to make the work openly available immediately without an embargo, and to make it reusable. So make it available under an open license. So that's a very broad definition of what rights retention is. And then we can have different right retention strategies or policies that will actually make this work in reality.

Jon Treadway [: 00:04:38

Just to add to that, sometimes the rights are retained by an institution itself in order to help researchers make things openly accessible and reusable. Sometimes they're retained by the researcher and the ran... as Eva says, there's a, that that broad definition allows for a wide range of different positions to be set out by institutions according to different circumstances. And we have found through the two phases of Retain, it's helpful to adopt quite a broad view of what rights retention can be because it allows a greater level of understanding of how people are working in this area and what progress they're making. And you'll be familiar with it means one thing in the UK, it may mean something slightly different to other institutions in different places. And we can get into that.

Nick Sheppard [: 00:05:22

Yeah, I am interested in learning a bit more because it is a broad project I'm right am I, that it's running two phases?

Jon Treadway [: 00:05:28

Yeah, I mean, it's worth. You know, it's worth saying. So Project Retain is part of Knowledge Rights 21, which we will probably refer to throughout as KR21. That's a project funded by Arcadia, the charitable fund of Lisbet Rausing and Peter Baldwin. KR21 is focused about, focused on bringing about changes in legislation and practice in Europe to strengthen the right to all knowledge. And then within KL21 there are a few projects and retain has in two phases been focused at looking at the development of policies around rights retention. The first phase ran in 2022 through to 2023 and that was very, very deliberately broad. We were talking to institutions and to publishers and to funders and to other policymakers, umbrella bodies.

Jon Treadway [: 00:06:20

We were looking at a lot of qualitative, sorry, quantitative data analysis, looking at the policy positions that publishers were taking, looking through surveys to look at the types of policies that institutions were developing. It was quite a long and large effort and it gave us a very broad picture as to what was happening across Europe. The second phase, which is the one, Nick, as you say, where we published a report last week, has been very deliberately, a bit more focused, looking in detail in 10 European countries at initiatives that are in place to try and make progress on rights retention through institutional level policies. So encouraging or helping research institutions to put in place policies that will encourage their researchers or help their researchers sometimes to retain the rights, as Eva mentioned, definition. And so that's the report that we just published, contains case studies from 10 European countries, including the UK and then has an overview as to some of the trends and themes that we're seeing there. And some, we hope, quite practical, practical points directly at those who in any European setting might be interested in how they can help their institution to develop policies to support researchers to retain their rights.

Nick Sheppard [: 00:07:39

So, you know, we're talking about these institutional policies. Can we just perhaps dig down a little bit into what it means in the context of open research? So any research colleagues that are listening, for example, they'll be familiar with perhaps paying what's called an APC and article processing charge to publish open access in the uk, for example, they may be familiar also with self archiving, as we call it, into a repository. So it Leeds and with the, with the White Rose Consortium and the White Rose Research Online repository for that purpose, which is sometimes referred to as green Open access. So you've spoken to researchers, I think, as part of this research, but they might not be that familiar with some of these issues in terms of why do they need to retain their rights and what are the issues that we're actually sort of addressing in terms of the broader ecosystem around open access?

Iva Melinščak Zlodi [: 00:08:32

In all these different contexts, you need, your researchers actually need to take care of retaining their rights. So it's not...the first thing, it's about making things openly available, but it's also retaining some rights for their own use and reuse and to be able to share and build upon even their own work. So sometimes researchers often publish in open access by being part of the transformative deals or by paying APC. But even in that case they need to be aware of what rights are they assigning to publishers and what will be the license that the work is published under. So for instance, if they publish work in open access journals, but they use, I don't know, non commercial or non derivative license, they still have to care about who will have the right to authorise further derivative use or further commercial use, whether that be will be a publisher or the author will retain this right for themselves. So even in this context it can be challenging.

Nick Sheppard [: 00:09:50

Perhaps we can talk a bit more about licensing as well because you've mentioned...because this is an area that I know from experience can be quite confusing to colleagues sometimes. So CC BY is the more liberal version of the open license Creative Commons Attribution. But you've also mentioned there that there's other clauses that very often colleagues may for various reasons want to apply to their work. Would you tend to, I don't know if the report as such recommends a particular license, would you tend to recommend CC BY over the other more restrictive licenses?

Iva Melinščak Zlodi [: 00:10:25

The general recommendation for all the open access work is always to, if possible use a CC BY license because that is the one that really enables further reuse and building knowledge on the shoulders of the others. But then again we have certain context, especially maybe in social science and humanities, where non derivative license or non commercial license could make some sense. But if you do decide to use this more restrictive licenses, then researchers really need to take care of. So that just means that you can still allow commercial or derivative use. But it's the issue of who will be the one who will authorize it, whether that will be the author or the publisher. So that's the catch where you need to pay attention.

Nick Sheppard [: 00:11:25

Thank you. That gives a greater sense of what we're talking about. But as well the landscape's changing I think in the UK I'm conscious, you know, we're talking about. And perhaps you talk a bit more about how the report covers different countries across Europe and where the legislative framework might be different.

Jon Treadway [: 00:11:41

Yeah, well, you know what, it may be even worth just stepping back two years to the first phase of Retain Nick. So we found in, you know, we did a survey and we got very good, you know, hundreds of responses from around Europe and it became very clear that in 2022 and 2023 something had changed because large number of institutions were thinking about rights retention policies and developing them, and some had launched them. And in fact it annoyed our colleagues on Retain because I said, whenever we publish this, it will be out of date. Because we were saying lots of people were developing policies and every week new ones were being launched. And what had happened was, I think Plan S, through its own rights retention policy, had raised this issue in the consciousness of the sector. And a number of people around Europe were thinking about what they could do, institutional level in particular. And the biggest things that changed were in the uk and I would say in Norway there were some other pockets of things going around. But in the UK there was sort of the culmination of work founded by the UK Scholarly Communication license and model policy and a number of institutions who had done work looking at possibilities in the UK of advancing rights retention.

Jon Treadway [: 00:12:51

And they sought legal advice that demonstrated that there was potential for a carve out in British copyright law that allowed where you could establish the allocation of a prior license to an institution and that that had been notified that that granted to the institution and researchers sufficient rights to retain rights to their publications, make them openly accessible immediately and reusable. And so, and you may be familiar with this, lots of institutions in the uk, following on from Edinburgh and Cambridge, who were sort of the first ones to do it, developed policies, wrote to publishers, and that that meant that they asserted in law a right to prior license before any publishing license had been established, and that they had therefore, with their researchers, the right to put research papers into repositories and make them openly accessible. The situation in Norway was slightly different, mainly because the carve out that I just described, that doesn't exist in Norway. And so you had a number of institutions seeking legal advice and thinking about what options they had. And essentially they decided as a group of universities that they were going to in Norway, the large group of research universities in Norway, all together, their rectors assumed legal responsibility for interpreting and applying policies that allowed researchers to take retain rights to put their papers into repositories. And so the effect is the same in Norway, but there it is really all universities together, stepping forward, developing a policy, saying that this is something we're going to do and that rectors will be legally responsible for consequences, thus meaning that researchers are essentially shielded from any difficulty that arises from them adopting this position. And the motivations in Norway and the UK are similar. A desire to make sure that all papers can be made openly accessible reach, that longer tail of researchers who might not have access to funding or access through transformative agreements to make sure everything's openly accessible.

Jon Treadway [: 00:14:51

And I mentioned the UK and Norway because two years ago they were at the sort of vanguard of developing these policies and there were a couple of institutions in Sweden and in other places who were thinking about it, but that was really where the most activity was. And so coming back to it two years later, we featured case studies in Norway and in the UK to see how things have progressed further. But then we've also featured another eight case studies of initiatives that are working in different European countries to see what is the basis on which institutions could develop policy. If no obvious basis exists, what needs to be done in terms of legislative reform to achieve that? What kind of collaboration between institutions or institutions and other stakeholders in the research ecosystem is most likely to move things forwards?

Nick Sheppard [: 00:15:40

No, thanks for that, Jon, that's great. I mean, as you say, it only came out on Monday, the report, as we're speaking on the Wednesday, obviously more time will have passed by the time any colleagues listen to this. And obviously, as you'd alluded to and you'd expect, I'm far more familiar with the situation in the uk. And just for any listeners from my own university or from the N8 Research Partnership, which is which Leeds is a member of, as one of the eight most research intensive universities in the north of England, I have written them down here, so I'm just going to say them because I can't remember them. So that's Durham, Lancaster, Liverpool, Manchester, Newcastle, Sheffield and York and Leeds. We do have a rights retention policy, both at the N8 level and as the University of Leeds. And just to say that I'm in fact planning to do this podcast in two parts, so following on with the senior Leeds colleague to discuss this in a slightly more local context. But the N8 was in fact one of your case studies for this most recent report? I think it was, and I was just scanning it before, as I say, I haven't had a chance to read the thing in full yet.

Nick Sheppard [: 00:16:40

But you highlighted that networks like the N8 can be very effective in promoting rights retention collectively. So that was one of the findings, I think, in the case studies from the uk?

Jon Treadway [: 00:16:51

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, so you know, what would we point out in the N8? It was the first coalition of organisations I think certainly in the UK to develop rights retention policies. It was based on existing collaboration patterns. So there's lots of different levels at which the N8 collaborate. But the specifically relevant one for this case study was the existing network of library directors who work together on different projects and some around open access in the past. Why was it valuable? So it meant that people could move together and I think certainly some of the institutions wouldn't have moved as quickly if they weren't moving as a group, all together as one. There was some pooling of resources so you could have collaborative discussions between legal colleagues. So, you know, as I say, this legal background work had been done in the UK and it was then reconsidered and adapted by different universities.

Jon Treadway [: 00:17:43

And so that was pooled a bit when it came to notifying partners, publishers. There was shared contact lists, shared resources for making sure that letters were developed and sent out. And it also allowed for flexibility within the N8. So actually the collaboration was around resourcing and a joint statement saying that as a group they were adopting rights retention policy. But the rights retention policies aren't exactly the same across the N8. Different institutions have slightly different clauses, I think, around whether it covers all staff or students or postgraduate students. I think there's some difference around whether it covers...all of them, cover scholarly journal articles, all of them, I think, to a degree, cover monographs. But I think the exact coverage of some other scholarly outputs is slightly different.

Nick Sheppard [: 00:18:30

Yeah. Sorry, Iva, do you want to come in?

Iva Melinščak Zlodi [: 00:18:32

Well, maybe just one thing that's not strictly related to N8, but it is interesting to hear, and this is something that we learned from both of the Retain phases, is that in UK there was a...so it's not just a library thing. It's not just libraries getting together and moving things forward. The work has actually begun a lot before and it was also about involving university managers and at some institution, especially the early adopters of right retention policy, a lot of exchange with researchers. So it is something that came as a response to perhaps an input from the funders of research, but it was also very much endorsed by the policymakers, the university managers, and there was input from researchers who were interested in this topic and who helped to develop these policies to actually be supportive for researchers and to help them. So I think that that's something that needs to be stressed also.

Nick Sheppard [: 00:19:46

Yeah, and obviously we're. And partly, hopefully this podcast will form part of our communication as a university, as the University of Leeds and perhaps the N8 as well, around some of these issues. But, you know, we have a publications policy which includes rights retention. I'm just thinking, I won't go into too much detail right now, John, but one of the issues, for example, is that PGRs don't necessarily have access to funding, open access in the same way as staff, potentially, for example, in which case rights retention may be an option for them to publish where they can't potentially afford to pay APCs, for example?

Jon Treadway [: 00:20:27

Absolutely. And I think it's also worth saying there's very clear reasons why rights retention has moved, is moving. People are thinking about it, people are actively involved in it. It. It's still very early days to say what impact it's had. Right. So even though you've got lots of institutions in the UK, I think essentially every institution in Norway has a policy, even though you've got that coverage in those two countries still only basically a year since those policies were launched, communicated and have been in place. And so you can, you know, in the N8 institutions that we spoke to, you can say that there has been a tangible increase in papers being made openly accessible through rights retention and you can say that in Norway, but there's still relatively small numbers in the grand scheme of things and it's too early to make grand claims about what impact these rights retention policies are going to have on reuse of research and ope...being mad...materials being made openly accessible across Europe.

Nick Sheppard [: 00:21:28

Yeah, and I mean it's still an ongoing issue in the UK. You know, there's a lot of discussion on some, many of the email lists that I'm a member of from other universities, perhaps smaller universities, or those that don't have the benefit of a network like the N8 and, or don't have the legal support perhaps, etc. So it's still ongoing in the UK, even though it sounds like perhaps progress in the UK has been, is further ahead than many other countries. And also the landscape's changing, as we alluded to before. But something I'll probably pick up in more detail with my colleague when I discuss with her is the big deals are up for negotiation in the UK at the moment and that may well have an impact. Already universities are withdrawing those deals. York is a member of the N8, I think has withdrawn from some of their transitional agreements, which means they may have to rely more on rights retention, for example.

Jon Treadway [: 00:22:20

Yeah, and I think that's absolutely right. And we mentioned York in our case study and due to budget constraints they've, this is very public knowledge, they've exited from some transformative agreements. They're thinking about the cost of subscriptions to highest use titles and mitigating the loss of read access in some ways through strategies like rights retention and so exactly as you say, Nick, this is an ongoing topic and rights retention is one strand in a broader tapestry of conversations about how affordable is publishing open access research and do the existing mechanisms that are in place work. And you know, we touch on other areas this, you know, we're not focused on diamond open access within this report, but it comes up and countries that are developing rights retention initiatives with institutions are also developing initiatives around Diamond Open access and other strands of activity to consider how they can best meet their commitment to making all research open access. It's all interwoven.

Iva Melinščak Zlodi [: 00:23:25

So yes, maybe just to add that it's not always just looking at those different paths as alternatives. For instance, John mentioned Diamond. Diamond is something that also needs to embrace right retention. So for every institution that is developing a Diamond Open access publishing program or thinking of financially supporting a Diamond program, they need to take care of the, of the different copyright policies that these diamond journals and books will actually implement. And they have to. So that's something that we've done quite a lot in the first phase of the Retain project, we also investigated the licensing and copyright policies of smaller open access publishers. So we realized that actually there's work to be done in that area also about raising awareness and that even in open access world, you know, you have to, these journals have to have clear policies, have to know, have to help their authors and so on.

Nick Sheppard [: 00:24:36

Yeah, no thanks Iva. And could you come back to you as well on that you mentioned earlier... I'm very conscious actually by the way that we're potentially using quite a lot of jargon as people familiar with this. I will. And we've mentioned very various organisations etc, so in the show notes to this episode, I'll...I might even put a bit of a glossary or whatever, or I'll think of ways of getting around that. But I'll put links to some of the things that you've mentioned. You mentioned embargo and that's one of the things that obviously rights retention is intended to facilitate immediate open access where we wouldn't have to go with a publisher's embargo.

Nick Sheppard [: 00:25:12

So can I just ask what the publisher reaction has been to this, Iva, in your experience, are they concerned how it might affect their business models, for example?

Iva Melinščak Zlodi [: 00:25:24

So we haven't, in the second phase, we haven't actually explored the relationship. So we haven't directly talked to the publisher. We have in the first phase.

Nick Sheppard [: 00:25:38

Okay.

Iva Melinščak Zlodi [: 00:25:38

And there we saw some concerns related to either zero embargo or the use of the most liberal license, CC by license. So although there are examples of even for profit publishers who do allow, for instance, green open access with zero embargo. So it's not unimaginable. But there has been some reactions from the large associations of commercial publishers who were opposed to this idea. So there is still place for further discussions and negotiations. And the landscape is changing very much so we will see what will happen in the future with different parts to open actually developing.

Jon Treadway [: 00:26:33

Yeah, I mean. So, Nick, your question. What reaction has there been from publishers in the 10 case studies from the second phase of retain? Really, very little. In the UK, in particular, the institutions who were adopting policies actively corresponded with publishers to make sure they were aware of the policy. That was one of the elements that made it effective under UK law. And largely there were a few responses. There were probably as many positive responses as negative responses from publishers. And many of the negative responses were generally just misunderstanding what was being asserted and what was being done.

Jon Treadway [: 00:27:09

The response has been essentially muted. And that's the case in all of the jurisdictions we've talked about. A caveat might be that in a couple of the countries that we looked at in case studies, there's been a bit more active dialogue with. With local publishers, so national publishers who publish in the language in the country that we're talking to about the case study. So there has been a bit more active dialogue when policies are being adapted and what that means. But again, and this goes back to a point Iva made and that we established in Retain 1, the attitude of the publishing community is not one thing. There is lots of space for dialogue in this area. There is lots of space for establishing relationships with publishers and having conversations.

Jon Treadway [: 00:27:55

We spoke to a number of publishers in the first phase of Rretain. They were very keen and willing to speak with us. And one of the conclusions we drew was to encourage people to speak to others in other communities and that, you know, sort of having polarised stances was being unhelpful because actually there was a lot of ground to find common routes forward and find ways out. And so I hope that that remains the case a few years on, even though it's not been the area of major focus for us this time around.

Nick Sheppard [: 00:28:25

Yeah, well, you know, we've explored just how potentially complex an area and how evolving the area is. But just perhaps before we finish, just to think about, from my perspective, I think one of the things that has sort of led to the upsurge in rights retention is that we haven't perhaps moved... transitiones to full open access as quickly as we hoped might happen. Would that be fair comment, do you think? Is that one of the reasons that rights retention has become more important?

Jon Treadway [: 00:28:57

Yeah, I mean, I think definitely pace of change is a reason why people are looking at rights retention policies as an option. They're also looking at the cost, just the cost of funding article processing charges or large scale open access agreements and thinking, you know, there may be a better cost effective option here. There's also specific questions in some countries about particular disciplines or particular protection of bibliodiversity and publishing in a particular language and how you can facilitate open access for those communities or those specific pockets. And this is, you know, a way in which, you know, a potential way to do that along with other strains which we've already been talking about. So yeah, the pace of change is absolutely one of the reasons, but it's not the only one. And it dovetails very well with other things that people mention when they're talking about it.

Iva Melinščak Zlodi [: 00:29:55

Yeah, maybe I can chime in. So one thing is achieving open access at the larger scale and more quickly and effectively. But also when we spoke about what rights retention is, so we mentioned that it's retaining rights by the authors, but it's also in a way retaining the rights by the institutions on navigating this change to open access. So institutions actually want to have alternative ways of achieving more open access and not leaving all the decisions to large publishers. So having these alternative ways, including green, open access, diamond open access and gold, paid gold, but in under fair conditions, is all under the same umbrella of achieving this final goal. So retaining the rights to navigate change is also one way of looking at that from the institutional perspective, I guess. And for libraries especially,

Nick Sheppard [: 00:31:01

No thank you, and I'm just conscious of time. So perhaps just ask what sort of next steps you envisage? Either for Retain, will there be a third report? I'm not sure. Or is that finished now? And what about the sector at large and where might things go? I mean, we've already started to touch on that and obviously there's a lot of uncertainty. But any sort of final thoughts on either of those?

Jon Treadway [: 00:31:24

I mean, the easy thing to say is there will continue to be work on rights retention under KR21. This is the end of Retain in its current format. There may well be in future a similar phase looking at further progress on rights retention policies and other things. Whether it's under the banner of retain or not is another question, and that will come in the future. I think the most significant thing to let potential listeners know about is the community of practice that is up and running. So one of the things that we found through our research and then advocacy as a result of the two phases was a strong desire for people to talk to one another and share experiences. And so there is a already very successful community of practice for people in institutions or those who are considering or responsible for the development of institutional rights retention policies. I think it's had three sessions or maybe four.

Jon Treadway [: 00:32:22

I think the fourth is coming up and it is a forum in which people can get together. It is a closed forum, so it's only people in that circumstance. We want it to be somewhere where they can speak freely and openly. And we have invited speakers coming to talk about their own experiences and different aspects of developing policy, you know, drawing on the findings of the report, but also what people in that community want and need to hear about and where they want to share ideas. So I would really encourage people to. And Nick, we can make available a link for you in the show notes as well. You know, really, really encourage people who, who are interested in this topic who may have read the report and seen some of the recommendations we make around building coalitions and finding people to talk to and thinking about what you can draw from others experiences. Well, we've tried to create this forum for people doing exactly those things.

Jon Treadway [: 00:33:10

So that's the strongest thing I think I can offer in terms of what happens next and what we hope people will do in the coming months.

Nick Sheppard [: 00:33:20

Thank you very much. Any final thoughts from you, Iva?

Iva Melinščak Zlodi [: 00:33:24

No. I would like to reiterate the invitation from John to join the community of practice. So it's really, it's a place that gets you engaged with people from all around Europe. So, and many people from UK are there, but there are people from other countries, they are asking interesting questions. There are things that you in UK can perhaps learn from others but also, also in many cases we actually invite UK people to explain what's happening with you as pioneers of right retention. So come and join us.

Nick Sheppard [: 00:34:07

Thank you very much. And we will put some links into the, into the show notes and people can follow up with that if they are interested. So thank you very much for your time John, and thank you very much and yeah, we'll, we'll speak again. So thank you and goodbye.

Intro / outro [: 00:34:22

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