REF OA requirements

The following publication types must comply with the REF OA Policy:

• Conference contributions in conference proceedings with an ISSN

Conference contributions include full written papers or other conference contributions that meet the definition of research. For the REF, research is defined as 'a process of investigation leading to new insights, effectively shared'. If in doubt, assume your conference contribution needs to comply with the REF OA Policy. 

• Articles published in journals with an ISSN

In-scope articles include research and review articles. Publications which do not require peer review and/or are invited, commissioned, or commentary are all in scope of the REF OA Policy and must meet the requirements above.

The REF OA Policy does not apply to longform publications like monographs, book chapters or other longform publications, working papers, creative or practice-based research outputs, or data (though these can be submitted to the REF). Longform publications are expected to be in scope of the policy for the next assessment exercise (from 1 January 2029), but authors of such publications are encouraged to pursue open access where possible in the current exercise.

Detailed requirements are available below, but generally, to be eligible for submission to REF2029, the final peer-reviewed manuscript of your journal article or conference paper (Author Accepted Manuscript - AAM) must:

• have a publication date from 1 January 2021 onwards
• have been deposited in an institutional or subject repository within 3 months of acceptance
• have been made discoverable and accessible (free to read and download) within a defined period*

*The permitted embargo periods are 12 months for Main Panels A and B (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Medicine); 24 months for Main Panels C and D (Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences). If you wish to publish in a journal with a longer embargo period, an exception may apply (see below “What if my output doesn’t comply?”

Note: the Version of Record (VoR) is the copy-edited, typeset version of the publication available on the publisher’s platform. If the VoR is published in immediate open access with a permanent licence which permits copying and reuse (usually a Creative Commons (CC) licence), this will also be considered eligible under the REF OA Policy. Stirling authors should still deposit the AAM on acceptance via Worktribe, in accordance with the University OA Policy. 

In-scope publications are eligible for submission if:

• The output was deposited in a repository (institutional or subject) on acceptance (and no later than 3 months after acceptance).
• The version deposited is at a minimum the AAM (pre-print versions are not eligible).
  If you are not publishing the VoR in open access (e.g. a hybrid journal without paying an APC), you can use the Sherpa Services tool to identify a publisher or journal’s policy on deposits and confirm you will be able to make a REF-compliant deposit.

Note: Authors should deposit the AAM on acceptance even when the VoR will be available in open access or the VoR is permitted to be deposited by publisher policy, so there is no delay in creating the output record. In these cases, the Library team may replace the AAM at a later date with the VoR.

Depositing accepted papers via Worktribe

The process for adding accepted papers to Worktribe is outlined in detail in the Worktribe Adding Outputs guide.

Date of Acceptance

As a fixed point, the date of acceptance of a manuscript is used to determine whether an article is in-scope and compliant with different requirements of the REF OA policy.

The date of acceptance is the point at which the author is notified that:

• their output has been reviewed by the journal or conference (normally via peer review)
• all academically necessary changes have been made in response to that review
• the article is ready to be taken through the final steps toward publication (normally copy-editing and typesetting).

At this stage, the journal editor or conference organiser normally notifies the author that their paper has been ‘firmly’ accepted (as opposed to any earlier point of ‘provisional’ acceptance e.g., conditional on major or minor revisions being made) and the paper is ready for copy-editing or typesetting. This is the date of notification that should be taken to mean the ‘date of acceptance’. You will need to take action at this stage.

Identifying the correct version of the manuscript is not always easy – see the blog post ‘Manuscript detectives - submitted, accepted or published?'

Suitable Repository

Note that making your publication available via social networking sites such as ResearchGate or Academia.edu will not meet the REF OA Policy requirement. A social networking site is not an open access repository and there are major differences between such networking sites and institutional (like STORRE) or subject repositories.

Subject repositories are permitted if they meet the system requirements in the REF OA Policy but, per the University’s OA Policy, Stirling authors should still create an output record in Worktribe so that the output is discoverable in our institutional repository.

In-scope publications must be discoverable as follows:

• the output record in the repository should contain sufficient information about the content (metadata) to facilitate discovery via search engines.

You should ensure you populate any required fields when you create an output record in Worktribe. Where available, please add any additional relevant information.