Swansea University is the first in Wales to launch a new Research Publications Policy that embodies the principle of Rights Retention, ensuring the accessibility, openness, and sustainability of publicly funded research conducted within the University.
With the unveiling of this policy, the University is taking a proactive step to empower its researchers and strengthen its position as a leader in academic research, advancing the principles of open access and research transparency.
This innovative initiative has been collaboratively developed and reinforces the University’s institutional commitment to the principles of academic freedom, knowledge dissemination, and research impact.
Key highlights of Swansea University's Rights Retention Policy include:
- Retaining Ownership - Researchers at Swansea University will retain the rights to their scholarly articles, journal, and conference articles, as well as book chapters, ensuring they have the freedom to share and disseminate their work when and where they see fit using a Create Commons License (CC-BY 4.0).
- Open Access Mandate - The policy aligns with the principles of open access, requiring researchers to deposit their accepted manuscripts of journal and conference articles and book chapters in the university's institutional repository, Cronfa. This will make these research outputs freely accessible to the global community without any embargo or paywall.
Professor Biagio Lucini, Deputy Pro-Vice Chancellor for Research Culture, said: “The main purpose of research being to serve the collective welfare of society, I fully endorse the principles of rights retention by the authors of research works and I am applying it to all my publications.
“Retaining rights with a permissive license like the CC BY 4.0 becomes crucial in fulfilling the mission of research. It enables authors to effectively communicate their findings to a diverse audience using a variety of platforms, from traditional specialised outlets to social media. By expanding the audience and the pool of potential beneficiaries, this approach guarantees heightened visibility of the work and empowers readers to engage with it fully, unburdened by concerns of copyright infringement. At the same time, authors retain complete control of their publications and receive proper recognition for their contributions.”
Read the Research Publications Policy.
Contact the Library Research Support team to find out more: LibraryResearchSupport@swansea.ac.uk | 01792 295931.