Research Excellence Framework Open Access policy
Answer
The Research Excellence Framework (REF) is the UK’s system for assessing the excellence of research produced by UK higher education providers (HEIs). Research England manages the REF on behalf of all four UK higher education funding bodies. The next exercise is planned for 2029.
Research England has established a REF Open Access policy which applies to submissions to REF exercises. It is a Green Open Access (OA) policy and authors are not required to pay Article Processing Charges (APCs) to publishers to comply with the policy.
The policy states that, to be eligible for submission to the REF, all journal articles and peer-reviewed conference papers must be:
-
deposited in an approved repository within three months of publication;
-
subsequently made OA;
-
papers can be embargoed for up to 6 months for REF Panels A (Medicine, Health and Life Sciences) & B (Physical Sciences, Engineering and Mathematics) or 12 months for REF Panels C (Social Sciences) & D (Arts and Humanities);
-
papers not deposited within the three month timeframe may qualify for one of the exceptions set by REF. Authors should contact us and, where possible, still deposit their manuscripts so that the Library may investigate.
Research England provided an update to the policy in May 2025. The changes outlined were minor and largely do not affect UoM researchers. Additional clarification was provided on the following points:
-
Assurance that there is no expectation for individuals or institutions to pay for Open Access in order to comply with the policy.
-
Recognition of Diamond Open Access as a possible compliance route, alongside Gold Open Access.
Author actions
On acceptance, authors should deposit their Author Accepted Manuscript (AAM) to Pure via the Open Access Gateway.
Papers published Gold OA automatically meet the policy requirements. Authors wishing to request institutional funding to cover Gold OA costs should use the OA Gateway to do so. For more speculative requests author should use the OA enquiry form.
There is no OA requirement for longform outputs (monographs and book chapters) for REF 2029, though open sharing of these outputs is likely to be encouraged. Please see the following article for more information:
Other REF-related articles
What should I do if I miss the window to deposit my work?
Further support
Need any help? You can find more articles about other Open Access-related topics or get in touch with the team.