Copyright

ORCA Guidance on Copyright and Author/Publisher Agreements

Please note that it is your responsibility as an author to ensure that uploading the full text of your publication does not breach copyright regulations. It is an ORCA requirement that you confirm your acceptance of copyright responsibility prior to depositing an item.

Advice and information on submitting full-text publications to ORCA

The majority of publishers will allow authors to deposit a version of their publications in an institutional repository, usually the author's final peer-reviewed manuscript as accepted for publication ('the post-print'), rather than the 'published version', e.g. final PDF. It is therefore important that you retain copies of your work from different stages of the publication process. We recommend that you at least keep the final accepted version ('post print') copy of your paper.

You can normally upload full text when:

• the paper has been published as gold or diamond open access with a Creative Commons or equivalent license that permits re-use.
• As the final peer-reviewed manuscript as accepted for publication by the publisher ('the post-print'). This is the version that has been peer-reviewed and corrected, and is the version that will be published, but does not have the Publisher's imprint, typesetting or pagination.
• you have received written permission from the publisher to add a full-text version of your work to ORCA. Please send a copy of this permission to the ORCA team, who will also add any required embargo period.

Advice and information on Author/Publisher Agreements

When your work is accepted for publication, the publisher will require you to sign a publication agreement. You should read carefully any copyright agreements you are asked to sign, and if necessary seek professional legal advice. If the agreement is signed without retaining any rights, you may have to obtain written permission from the publisher to re-use the work, for example in:

• Teaching and use in course packs
• Creating derivative works
• Re-use of excerpts in other works
• Posting the work on an author website or in an institutional repository
• Making copies of the work for colleagues

You are encouraged, where possible, to seek a licence to print agreement with a publisher rather than a Copyright Transfer Agreement. This should ensure that the author(s) retain all rights. Once again, please note that the publisher may request a defined term of exclusivity preventing any further publication of your work. After such period you may, if agreed, be free to submit your work to ORCA. Please ensure you are clear on what you have agreed to prior to signing any agreement. If in doubt seek clarification in writing (any significant changes should be reflected in the agreement) and/or seek professional legal advice.

Rights Retention at Cardiff University

Cardiff University is implementing a Rights Retention Strategy as part of our updated University Open Access Publications Policy which will take effect from 1 October 2025, and apply to all articles and published conference papers accepted for publication from that date.

As part of the Rights Retention strategy, Cardiff University authors automatically grant to the university a non-exclusive licence to archive the accepted manuscript version (often called the 'post-print' or 'green' version) in the institutional repository ORCA with no embargo period and under a CC-BY licence. This allows all users, including the authors, to re-share and re-use this work in research and teaching according to the terms of the Creative Commons license, and enables the meeting of funder and REF requirements for open access.

The accepted manuscript version is the version that has been peer-reviewed and corrected, and is the version that will be published, but does not have the publisher's imprint, typesetting or pagination.

Background to Rights Retention

As the author, you own the copyright to the work you have created, but when your work is accepted for publication in a subscription or hybrid journal, you are usually asked to gift the copyright to the publisher via a Copyright Transfer Agreement, or to grant them an exclusive license to publish. This means that the publisher then owns or controls the work, and your re-use of it is limited to what the publisher permits. For example, you may need to seek permission to add the accepted manuscript to ORCA, to translate the work, or to re-use the work in your teaching.

Rights Retention allows you to retain copyright of the accepted manuscript and to re-use it in any way you wish by adding a Creative Commons license.

The benefits of this approach are:

• It empowers you to retain rights to share your research as widely as possible, including with colleagues and via social media
• It enables immediate access to your research
• It increases opportunities for your work to reach a broader audience, both inside and outside academia, which in turn could lead to greater societal impact and increased citations and collaborations
• It allows you to meet funder compliancy requirements, many of whom mandate open access, whilst continuing to publish in the journal of your choice
• It aligns with the university's commitment to an open and transparent research culture.

Other UK and international universities who have adopted a Rights Retention policy have found that the risk of publishers rejecting your manuscript because of the policy is very low but publishers do sometimes respond to statements with new policies of their own. If required to, you can opt out of the policy on a case-by-case basis.

Rights Retention and use of third-party copyright content

The Rights Retention Strategy does not apply to any third-party content, for examples images, photographs or extensive quotations, included within the accepted manuscript. To include third-party material in your work, one of the following must apply:

• The content in question is in the public domain and not subject to copyright
• The material is licenced under a CC-BY, CC0, or equivalent licence that permits re-use
• Use of the third-party content is covered by one of the exceptions in the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 such as for the purpose of 'criticism, review, quotation and news reporting'. This permits use, as long as the extracts are short, are necessary and appropriate to the point you are making, and full acknowledgement is made to the original source
• You have sought written permission from the rightsholder to include the material, explaining the open access and licence requirements of the university's Rights Retention Strategy.

If the rightsholder grants permission, but under a more restrictive licence, you will need to indicate their details and the terms of the licence under which the material is being made available in your paper.

If you are unable to gain permission to re-use the content, you have a number of options available. You can decide not to use the material at all; you can redact the material from the accepted manuscript deposited in ORCA; you can consider applying a more restrictive license to the accepted manuscript; or you can opt-out of rights retention for this publication entirely. Please contact rightsretention@cardiff.ac.uk to discuss further. There is also more information on the Rights Retention and third-party materials intranet page.

Redacting material if copyright permission is not granted

If permission is refused, or no answer is given, then you may wish to think about redacting the material reproduced in your work. To redact text, draw a black box over the text you wish to redact, and then delete the underlying text. To redact an image or table, remove the relevant material, and replace it with the words THIS IMAGE HAS BEEN REMOVED BY THE AUTHOR FOR COPYRIGHT REASONS. Do not delete the reference to the material you've removed, as this helps the reader to source it themselves.

More information on Rights Retention is available on the Cardiff University intranet. For advice on responding to publishers, to opt-out of Rights Retention for an individual publication or for other queries, please email rightsretention@cardiff.ac.uk