23 July 2020 – IARLA, representing the research libraries of Australia and New Zealand, Canada, Europe, United Kingdom, and the United States, would like to express support for the new cOAlition S Rights Retention Strategy. Under the strategy, participating funders will “require that a Creative Commons Attribution licence (CC BY) is applied to all Author Accepted Manuscripts (AAMs) or Versions of Record (VoR) reporting original research, supported in whole or in part by their funding.

 The cOAlition S funders want to effect a critical shift in the licensing landscape that would ensure that authors are able to publish in their journal of choice while also making their work openly accessible. The strategy overrides the rights transfer requirements that many publishers require as a condition of publishing in their journals.

Research libraries are committed to universal access to scholarly outputs, and believe that COVID-19 has clearly highlighted the inherent value of immediate openness within the scientific process. This cOAlition S strategy strengthens the repository-based route and signals the continued importance of a robust network of open repositories as a viable means to provide access to global scholarship. 

As part of the research ecosystem, research libraries provide institutional support for authors to license and retain AAMs through open repositories. Research libraries further commit to working with and encouraging: 

• Publishers to alter their licensing policies and to streamline workflows to support manuscript deposit in open repositories. 
• International, national and private funding bodies beyond those that have joined cOAlition S to similarly address the issue of journals’ rights transfer requirements which can prevent open publishing. 

Our member organizations have issued individual statements, including:

• Association of Research Libraries (ARL): https://www.arl.org/news/arl-welcomes-coalitions-rights-retention-strategy-calling-for-open-access-to-results-of-funded-research/ 
• Canadian Association of Research Libraries (CARL): https://www.carl-abrc.ca/news/reaction-plan-s-rights-retention-strategy/
• Ligue des Bibliothèques Européennes de Recherche (LIBER): https://libereurope.eu/blog/2020/07/16/liber-supports-coalitions-rights-retention-strategy-to-ensure-open-access-to-publicly-funded-research/ 
• Council of Australian University Libraries (CAUL): https://www.caul.edu.au/news/caul-and-aoasg-welcome-coalition-s-rights-retention-strategy