European institutions and funders are proposing several approaches aimed at achieving the final transition to reach Open Access to scientific publications. One of these approaches is to make changes in policies and legislation. Institutions are changing their policies to change their official stances on rights retention, copyright and Open Licensing.

In this context, Stichting IFLA Foundation Programme, in partnership with LIBER and SPARC Europe are implementing a three-year Arcadia Foundation-funded programme to reform copyright laws, regulations and other policy measures that enable libraries to provide significantly improved access to and use of copyrighted works. This programme, known as Knowledge Rights 21 (KR21), aims to promote change at European, national and local levels by accelerating the uptake of rights retention and open licensing.

In the framework of the KR21 programme, SPARC Europe is leading Project Retain which aims to analyse current policies on rights retention and open licensing in Europe, to make some recommendations to institutions willing to adopt them and to ensure that researchers are not overwhelmed by complex requirements and incentives supporting them in meeting publisher and funder mandates.

In this lightning talk we will focus on both quantitative data and qualitative lessons learnt from the research phase of Project Retain, which builds an evidence-base around current policies on copyright, rights retention and open licensing.

The research findings are based on a survey with over 200 respondents, over 30 interviews and focus groups and then particularly articulating the role the library community is playing in driving policy change in a number of countries across Europe. We will draw attention to the drivers and blockers of progress, offer examples of good practices and case studies showcasing innovative approaches to change management, whilst highlighting the different contexts and the stakeholder groups the library community is working with.

Our talk will articulate an Open Access call to action to encourage more institutional policymaking in the area of rights retention and open licensing to enable a simplified legal framework that better ensures the greater autonomy for authors and their institutions when seeking to publish OA.