What is the Rights Retention obligation?

Rights Retention obligation means that a researcher must retain sufficient rights to ensure open access to their work, even after the work has been published and a publishing contract governing the transfer of economic rights has been signed.

Under Article 41 of the Scientific Research and Innovation Activities Act, recipients of public research funding (50% or more) are required to retain their copyrights to the extent necessary to make their research results openly accessible. This means that, when negotiating publishing contracts, researchers must ensure that they keep enough economic rights to comply with open access requirements imposed by public funders. Researchers can fulfil this obligation by transferring their rights to the publisher on a non-exclusive basis or by granting the publisher a non-exclusive license to use the work, rather than transferring exclusive rights.