If your article is published open access under a Creative Commons license in publisher's service, you do not need to do anything. The university library will take care of self-archiving the published article's full-text version in university's institutional repository, and there is no need to self-archive the peer-reviewed manuscript version.
Prior licence applies to peer-reviewed articles in journals, conference proceedings, and anthologies (publication types A1–A4 in the Ministry of Education and Culture’s publication data collection).
No. The prior licence model provides researchers with more options for choosing a publication channel, as it allows them to meet funders' open access requirements even in cases where paying the open access fee (APC fee) in so-called hybrid journals is not feasible, or publisher's policy doesn't allow self-archiving without an embargo an under Creative Commons license.
The prior licence model applies to peer-reviewed research articles in journals, conference proceedings and anthologies published under university's affiliation. However, the prior licence model does not apply to publications where a bachelor or a master student is the sole author, because publications by undergraduate students are not taken into account in the Ministry of Education and Culture's publication data collection.
Use of discipline-specific repositories commonly used and endorsed by the respective research communities is recommended, because it increases the visibility and impact of the research. However, the full-text versions of peer-reviewed manuscripts or published articles should be deposited also to university's institutional repository to ensure long-term availability in national repositories. This strengthens national knowledge security.
The prior licence model applies also in cases where author leaves the university before the article is accepted for publication.
There are three different versions of a journal article or other research output: preprint, peer-reviewed manuscript, and published article.
1) Preprint is the manuscript version that has been submitted for review, but not yet undergone peer review.
Please note: Preprint doesn't comply with funders' open access policies, because funders require that peer-reviewed scientific articles are available open access.
2) Peer-reviewed manuscript (e.g. AAM, Author accepted manuscript, final draft) is the version that has been accepted for publication by the publisher. It does not have publisher's layout or logo on it.
Please note: If the published article is not published open access under open license, peer-reviewed manuscript will be used for self-archiving.
3) Published article (e.g. VoR, Version of Record, final published version) is the final version that has been peer-reviewed and published in a journal or proceedings, and has undergone editing and typesetting, and will have the publisher's logo on it.
Please note: If the published article is not available open access under an open license, it cannot be used for self-archiving.
Creative Commons licenses are the most common open licenses that enable the creator to specify how someone else may use their work. The creator always retains the copyright to their work. For example, the CC BY license allows the work to be freely copied, distributed, and modified, even for commercial purposes. The original work must always be attributed, and the creator's name must be mentioned. Several research funders require the use of the CC BY license. For more information, see
Currently, similar policies to prior licence model (internationally known as Rights Retention Strategies) are applied in more than
It is highly unlikely that publishers would pursue legal actions before giving the possibility to remove the peer-reviewed manuscript from the institutional repository. In the event of a dispute concerning interpretation and application of the prior licence model, university is responsible for solving it. If the publisher would contact you, please contact:
Some publishers (e.g.
Yes, you can sign the publishing agreement. The embargo period does not apply as your university's prior licence model precedes the publishing agreement.
No, university will inform publishers about the prior licence model in early 2026 and considers this as sufficient prior notice.
Application of this prior licence model should be agreed upon with the co-authors, similar to the authors' roles and their order in the article, choice and openness of the publication channel etc. If for any reason, one of the co-authors does not approve self-archiving the peer-reviewed manuscript without an embargo under a CC license, it is possible to opt out of the university's prior licence model.