These pages are designed to help UCL researchers understand the requirements of the open access policies for the 2029 Research Excellence Framework.
Open access and the REF
The UK REF exercise assesses the quality of research in UK Higher Education Institutions and informs the allocation of funding for research. An open access requirement was introduced for REF 2021 and continues for REF 2029. Only research papers meeting specific open access requirements are eligible for submission to the next REF.
- The original REF 2021 OA policy applies to journal articles and proceedings published until 31 December 2025 (date of first/online publication).
- The updated OA policy applies to journal articles and proceedings published from 01 January 2026.
Papers published as Gold/fully open access by the publisher, with a CC BY licence (e.g. through UCL’s transformative agreements or in a fully open access journal), comply with both policies.
From January 2026, there are stricter requirements where the publication is not made open access on the publisher's webpage. The author must still upload their final accepted manuscript to RPS to be made open access in UCL's repository (Green open access). UCL is planning measures to ensure that the new requirements - which relate to licensing and permitted embargo periods - will be met when when authors upload their manuscripts. Details will be shared in due course.
Longform outputs are not in scope of the policy: monographs, book chapters and edited collections do not need to be open access in order to be submitted to REF 2029. UCL authors can currently apply for funding to cover the cost of publishing longform publications Gold open access, or may (where the publisher permits) be able to make their their publication Green open access.
Summary of REF open access requirements
The REF open access policies are summaried below. See our understanding Open Access page for more on Gold and Green OA, and journal embargo periods.
REF2021 OA policy | REF2029 OA policy | |
---|---|---|
Scope | Articles and proceedings in a title with an ISSN, published until 31 Dec 2025 | Articles and proceedings in a title with an ISSN, published from 1 Jan 2026 |
Licence required | No licence requirement. | Creative Commons licence on final version or author manuscript. CC-BY strongly preferred. CC-BY-NC, CC-BY-ND, and CC-BY-NC-ND acceptable. |
If Gold/fully OA upon publication | No further action | No further action if paper uses a permitted licence. |
Version to upload if not Gold/fully OA | Author's final accepted manuscript. | Author's final accepted manuscript. |
Deadline for uploading author manuscript | 3 months from first/online publication. | 3 months from first/online publication. |
Maximum permitted journal embargo | 12 months (panels A/B) 24 months (panels C/D) | 6 months (panels A/B) 12 months (panels C/D) |
REF open access policy exceptions
A limited number of open access policy exceptions are available, where a paper may be submitted to the REF without meeting the open access requirements.
Full REF open access requirements
Details of both sets of requirements, for papers published 01 January 2021 to 31 December 2025 and papers published from 01 January 2026, are in the REF 2029 open access policy.