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REF: what do I need to do?

UCL researchers must record their publications in RPS, and upload their final accepted manuscripts, in order to meet REF open access requirements. A quick guide to uploading is included on this page.

Upload your manuscript to RPS

What do I need to do?

To be eligible for submission to the Research Excellence Framework (REF), UCL authors not publishing with Gold open access through UCL’s transformative agreements or in a fully open access journal must upload their final accepted manuscripts of journal articles and conference proceedings to UCL's Research Publications Service (RPS) on or before the first online publication date. The final deadline for uploading manuscripts is 3 months after first online publication.

  1. Maintain your list of publications list in RPS: this means regularly claiming publications (in response to email reminders), or manually adding publications which are not automatically brought into the system. This is important because RPS can only monitor REF compliance and send authors reminders to upload their publications once papers are claimed. RPS is used for selecting papers and submitting to the REF. See our guides to using RPS.
  2. Publish in journals in UCL's transformative agreements or in fully open access journals, and choose the CC BY licence. This licence is strongly preferred for REF, and required by other funders. The publisher will make your paper open access immediately upon publication, and it will be eligible for REF submission with no further action required: you do not need to upload it to RPS. If your paper is made Gold open access by the publisher and you are still receiving reminders to upload, contact the Open Access Team. From 2026, licences permitted for REF are: CC-BY (strongly preferred), CC-BY-NC, CC-BY-ND, and CC-BY-NC-ND.
  3. If your journal or conference proceeding is not included in UCL's agreements/fully open access (step 2), upload your final accepted manuscript in RPS on or before the first online publication date. The final upload deadline for REF is 3 months after online publication, but check any additional requirements before you submit: other funders (e.g. UKRI/Wellcome) require open access immediately upon publication. It is important to claim your papers and upload the manuscript as soon as you can - RPS will send you regular reminders until it is uploaded (see step 1). The final accepted manuscript means the final author version after peer review, but before the publisher's typesetting or copy-editing. This is often a Word document. If you don't have a copy, email the corresponding author or journal to obtain it, or contact the Open Access Team before the deadline for uploading has passed.

The policy does not apply to books, chapters, unpublished journal pre-prints, conference abstracts or posters. If you receive reminders to upload these types of publication, contact the Open Access Team.  

What happens after I upload?

Your paper will be made Green open access. UCL's Open Access Team:

  • Reviews your file to confirm that the version is correct.
  • Checks your journal's/proceedings' copyright policy and applies any required embargo on making the manuscript open access in UCL's repository, UCL Discovery.
  • Ensures that manuscripts are not made open access if the journal does not permit it.

From 2026, there are stricter REF requirements when a paper is made open access by this method, relating to licensing and permitted embargo periods. UCL is planning measures to ensure that the new requirements will be met when when authors upload their manuscripts. Details will be shared in due course.

Quick guide to uploading in RPS

There is a quick guide to uploading your publications below. Guides to maintaining your publications in RPS are also available. A record must already exist in RPS before you can upload your manuscript to it. If the publication is not listed on your publications page, then you will need to add it.

Adding a record in RPS 

  • Log in to RPS using your UCL username and password.
  • If your publication doesn't appear in your publications list, click ‘Menu’ at the top, then ‘Publications’, then ‘Add a new publication’ and choose the relevant type (e.g. ‘Add a new journal article’).
  • Search for your publication’s title or DOI. RPS will retrieve a record from another database if available – if so claim it, then skip to the ‘Upload your manuscript’ header below. 
  • If a record is not found, go to the next step and complete the mandatory fields to create a manual record. 

Upload your manuscript

  • Locate the record in your publications list or look for the ‘Deposit publications’ prompt on your RPS home page.
  • Click and open the record for the publication in question.
  • Select the ‘Deposit’ button on the right under the ‘Full text’ header. 
  • Click ‘Choose file’ and navigate to copy of your final accepted manuscript.
  • Select the file version. In most cases this will be ‘accepted version’.
  • Click ‘upload’ then ‘Deposit my publication’.

Papers in arXiv and other preprint servers

Preprints of published papers hosted on preprint servers do not satisfy the REF requirements. The submitted version prior to acceptance and before peer review should not be uploaded to RPS. However, where a version identical to the accepted manuscript/final version was uploaded to a preprint server before first online publication, the paper can be treated as compliant with the REF open access policy under a special provision in the policy. Some preprint servers do not allow authors to upload their final accepted manuscripts.