The Rights Retention Strategy (RRS) was designed by cOAlition S to solve a specific problem: letting Plan S-funded researchers publish in the subscription journal of their choice while still meeting their funder’s immediate open-access mandate. In practice, it has also produced a genuine, unresolved standoff. A funder’s grant conditions require one thing; a publisher’s copyright agreement can require the opposite; and the author submitting the manuscript is the one standing in the middle. This guide covers what that conflict actually looks like, how publishers have responded, where things stand going into 2026, and what an author caught in the middle can realistically do.
This page assumes you already know what RRS is mechanically — see the Rights Retention Strategy (RRS) dictionary entry for the operational definition. This guide is about the practical conflict RRS creates, not a re-explanation of the mechanism itself.
Where the conflict comes from
RRS works by having the funder’s grant condition attach a rights statement to the manuscript before submission — commonly a version of the sentence: “For the purpose of Open Access, a CC BY public copyright licence is applied to any Author Accepted Manuscript (AAM) version arising from this submission.” Because that condition exists before any agreement with a publisher is signed, a later copyright transfer agreement cannot retroactively remove it — the author never held the exclusive rights left to sign away for that manuscript version.
That is the theory. In practice, the conflict arises because a publisher’s standard copyright transfer or licence-to-publish agreement is drafted without reference to the author’s prior funder obligation, and many publishers’ submission and production systems do not check for, or accommodate, an RRS statement automatically. The author ends up holding two documents — a funder grant agreement and a publisher copyright agreement — that make contradictory demands about the same accepted manuscript, most often around whether an embargo period applies before the AAM can be deposited under a green open access licence.
How publishers have pushed back
Publisher resistance to RRS is not new, and it is not hypothetical. Within roughly a year of cOAlition S introducing RRS, more than 50 academic publishers — including the American Chemical Society (ACS) — had publicly signed statements opposing the policy, arguing it interfered with their own copyright and licensing terms. cOAlition S responded directly, publishing an open letter to researchers describing the specific tactics it said some publishers were using against RRS-flagged submissions:
- Misleading embargo guidance — telling authors an embargo period applies to their AAM even though the RRS statement means no publisher permission is required to share it immediately.
- Rejecting or rerouting RRS submissions — declining a manuscript that carries an RRS statement for the subscription route, or redirecting the author to a paid open-access option instead.
- Requiring an APC as a condition of submission — even in cases where the author’s funder has not agreed to cover that cost.
- Contractual terms designed to override the statement — copyright transfer or licence agreements that ask the author to agree to embargo terms inconsistent with what their funder already requires.
cOAlition S has been explicit about what this leaves the author facing: comply with the publisher’s terms and risk breaching the funder’s grant conditions (jeopardizing eligibility for future funding), or comply with the funder’s mandate and risk the publisher treating it as a breach of the publishing agreement. Neither option is one an individual author can safely resolve alone, which is why cOAlition S’s own guidance directs researchers to keep evidence of the RRS statement they submitted and to involve their institution’s library or research office when a publisher disputes it.
A concrete example: ACS’s paid zero-embargo option
The American Chemical Society illustrates how a large publisher has structured a response rather than simply rejecting RRS outright. In September 2023, ACS introduced a “zero embargo” option: an author whose funder requires immediate rights retention can pay a non-refundable Article Development Charge (ADC), reported at $2,500, to post a CC BY-licensed AAM in a repository immediately upon acceptance, without the embargo ACS otherwise applies. Authors who do not pay still transfer copyright to ACS as a standard condition of publication. This is one illustrative case, not a description of standard industry practice — publisher terms on RRS vary widely and change over time, so an author should always check the specific journal’s current author guidelines and its listing in Open Policy Finder (Sherpa Romeo) rather than assume any one publisher’s approach applies elsewhere.
Where things stand in 2026
cOAlition S published its strategy for 2026-2030, rolling out in two phases: an initial 2026-2027 period followed by a 2028-2030 period shaped by what the first phase shows works. The published strategy foregrounds newer priorities — most notably Towards Responsible Publishing, a proposal (developed with Research Consulting and Leiden’s CWTS through a stakeholder consultation of more than 11,600 respondents) to shift the funder-recognized default toward preprint-plus-open-review publishing rather than continued reliance on APC-funded gold open access.
What the 2026-2030 strategy document does not do is explicitly retire, reaffirm, or restructure RRS itself. RRS remains published as a current, active cOAlition S policy and resource as of 2026, and the underlying funder mandates that require it have not been withdrawn — but the forward-looking strategy is visibly weighted toward preprints and open review as the next phase of open-access policy, rather than toward strengthening enforcement of RRS against resistant publishers. In practical terms for an author: treat RRS as still fully in force for any Plan S-aligned funder that requires it, while expecting that the publisher-side friction described above has not been resolved by policy and is unlikely to disappear on its own in the near term. Nothing published to date suggests cOAlition S has reached, or is close to reaching, a negotiated settlement with the publishers still contesting the strategy.
What an author caught in the conflict should actually do
- Confirm the funder mandate first. Check whether the funder actually requires RRS as a grant condition (most cOAlition S members do, but requirements and effective dates vary by funder) before assuming it applies.
- Include the RRS statement at submission, not after acceptance. The standard wording needs to appear on the manuscript itself (cover letter, acknowledgements, or first page) before any publisher agreement exists — adding it later, after signing a copyright transfer agreement, is far weaker ground to stand on.
- Check the journal’s actual policy before submitting via Open Policy Finder (Sherpa Romeo) or the publisher’s own author guidelines, rather than discovering the conflict only after acceptance.
- Keep a record. Save the exact RRS statement submitted and when, in case a publisher later disputes that it applies.
- Loop in the library or research office early if a publisher pushes back — most institutions supporting Plan S-funded researchers have already handled this exact dispute with the same publisher for another author, and cOAlition S’s own guidance assumes this institutional layer will get involved rather than leaving the author to negotiate alone.
- Know the fallback options if a publisher will not budge: depositing the AAM in an institutional or subject repository under green OA regardless of the publisher’s preferred embargo (accepting the compliance risk the funder mandate is designed to avoid), paying a rights-retention fee where one is offered (as with ACS’s ADC), or choosing a different, RRS-compatible venue for that submission or a future one.
Frequently asked questions
Is the Rights Retention Strategy legally enforceable against a publisher?
RRS relies on a specific legal mechanism, not just funder policy: because the CC BY licence is asserted as a condition attached to the grant before any publisher agreement exists, a publisher’s later copyright transfer agreement cannot retroactively strip a right the author no longer held to give away. cOAlition S and legal commentary supporting RRS argue this makes the mechanism sound in principle. In practice, whether a specific dispute actually gets tested — through a publisher formally acting against an author, or through litigation — is a separate question from whether the mechanism is theoretically valid, and publishers’ pushback described above has mostly taken the form of submission-process friction rather than legal action against individual authors.
What happens if my funder requires RRS but my chosen journal won’t accept it?
You have to resolve the conflict before submission if possible: confirm the journal’s actual stance (via Sherpa Romeo or its own author guidance), involve your institution’s library or research office if the policy is unclear or disputed, and consider whether a different venue, a paid rights-retention option (where offered), or accepting the funder’s compliance requirement over the publisher’s preferred terms is the right call for that specific submission.
Do I have to pay a fee to comply with Rights Retention Strategy?
Not by design — RRS was built specifically so that immediate open access does not require paying an APC. In practice, some publishers have introduced fees (like ACS’s Article Development Charge) as their own response to RRS submissions, which is part of the publisher pushback this guide describes, not a requirement of RRS itself.
Is cOAlition S still enforcing Rights Retention Strategy in 2026?
Yes — RRS remains a current, published cOAlition S policy and the underlying funder mandates requiring it have not been withdrawn. The coalition’s 2026-2030 strategy document, however, is weighted toward newer priorities like Towards Responsible Publishing rather than toward new enforcement measures against publishers still contesting RRS, so the underlying funder-vs-publisher friction described in this guide has not been resolved by that strategy.
Related CASRAI resources
- Rights Retention Strategy (RRS) — the operational definition and mechanism
- cOAlition S and Plan S — the funder consortium and mandate behind RRS
- MIT and Harvard’s Institutional Rights-Retention Open Access Policies Compared — how university-level rights retention differs from funder-level RRS
- Self-Archiving Research Papers for Green Open Access: A Practical How-To
- How to Check a Journal’s Self-Archiving Policy with Open Policy Finder (Sherpa Romeo)
- Article Processing Charges (APCs) for Open Access: What They Are and How They Work
- Open Access Publishing: Models, Mandates, and Why It Matters
- Scholarly Publishing pillar
