The Marie Curie Alumni Association is a strong supporter of open science and for the empowerment of researchers, for example as described in our February 2020 statement ‘Researchers call on EU institutions to ensure free circulation of scientific knowledge’, our December 2019 statement ‘Researchers support sharing of peer-reviewed research without embargoes and restrictions’, our September 2018 ‘Joint Statement on Open Access for Researchers via Plan S’ and our May 2019 input to the ‘Stakeholder consultation on the future of scholarly publishing and scholarly communication’. Our previous efforts and positions align well with today’s announcement from cOAlition S on a new ‘Rights Retention Strategy’, which we therefore warmly welcome. Researchers should never be forced by a publisher to hand over the rights to their work, and we reiterate our previous call upon those publishers that still force barriers on the flow of knowledge, to modernize and join the numerous publishers that already today allow and encourage researchers to share their research findings without embargoes and restrictions. As a contributor to the cOAlition S taskforce on ‘Monitoring the effects of Plan S on Research and Scholarly Communication’, the Marie Curie Alumni Association commits to remain a constructive partner and positive force in the important endeavour of advancing open science while empowering researchers. Signed by Mostafa Moonir Shawrav (Chair of the Marie Curie Alumni Association) on July 15, 2020. Marie Curie Alumni Association, Avenue des Arts 24, B-1000, Brussels, Belgium Web: https://www.mariecuriealumni.eu ; This statement is released under a CC BY license. Please reference this statement using http://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3945884 Link to all MCAA statements: https://zenodo.org/communities/mcaa/