IRRP implementation in practice: an Open Research Scotland collaboration

The rights retention strategy involves the deposit of embargo-free author accepted manuscripts in institutional repositories under a Creative Commons licence. At a time when five Scottish universities have run their institutional rights retention policies (IRRPs) for at least a year (if often for much longer) and five additional ones are planning to pass their own policies in the course of 2025, it’s a good moment for a cross-institutional discussion on the various technical areas that would benefit from some level of consensus. Several key areas were addressed during the Open Research Scotland-held “IRRP implementation in practice” session on 16 January 2025. The paper provides a summary of the discussions, together with some institutional best practices identified during the session and some thoughts on how the application of rights retention could result in more visibility for research publications. This overview of the current state of IRRPs in Scotland will hopefully further our discussions on the uptake and implementation of this important tool for open research.