2024-08-15 REF 2029 open access policy notice

The four UK higher education funding bodies have begun to release information on their recent consultation on the future open access policy for the Research Excellence Framework (REF). The open access policy will outline open access requirements for the next REF exercise. There are revised requirements for journals and conference proceedings.

Learn more about the Research Excellence Framework (REF)

Timeline

The consultation ran 18 March-17 June 2024 and the final REF 2029 open access policy will be published in the autumn/winter of 2024.

It is proposed that the new policy will apply to journal articles and conference proceedings published from 1 January 2026.

While monographs were initially posited for inclusion in the policy, a decision has been taken to defer this to the ‘next’ REF, from 2029, to ensure sector readiness.

What can I do?

Further details

These details are proposals and are not confirmed. 

For full details please see the REF 2029 open access consultation site

Please note: long-form outputs (monographs, book chapters and edited collections) are no longer included for the REF beginning 1 January 2026, but it has been confirmed they will be included from the 1 January 2029.

Outputs published in journals that immediately and irrevocably make the final published version (version of record) freely available to read, and do so with an appropriate open access licence, will automatically comply with the REF open access policy.

Outputs compliant with the UKRI open access policy will automatically comply with the REF open access policy.

Check the UKRI open access policy

All other journal articles and conference proceedings in scope of the policy will need to be open access within one month of publication, or at the end of an embargo period no longer than six months (Main panels A and B) or 12 months (Main panels C and D).

There is no longer a need to deposit on acceptance, but the embargo periods are shorter than in REF 2021.

There are a range of allowable exceptions where open access is not possible due to issues such as the use of unlicensable third-party content, or relating to the author's employment status with the institution on the date of publication.

Open access relates to and is a part of a wider whole of open research. This consultation is focussed on the open access policy, i.e. the rules and requirements for eligible outputs which are in scope of the open access requirements for submission. There may be other provisions relating to open research more broadly within the PCE element of the exercise.