Open Access requirements for REF 2029

Open Access requirements for REF2029

Each work submitted to REF2029 must satisfy open access (OA) rules to be eligible. You can write the most important paper of your career, but if it is not available open access, we may not be able to submit it for our evaluation.

The OA rules for REF2029 have now been announced. Briefly, for papers published before 1 Jan 2026, the REF2021 rules apply (author-accepted manuscript must be deposited within 3 months of acceptance, and available within 12 months of publication). For papers published after 1 Jan 2026, the author-accepted manuscript must be deposited under a CC BY license or similar within 3 months of publication, and available within 6 months of publication.

The REF2029 rules are more lenient than the UKRI rules on open access. Anything UKRI-compliant will be REF2029-eligible.

For simplicity, the department's recommendation is therefore: follow the UKRI open access rules, even if you're not funded by UKRI. (This keeps the advice the same for everyone.)

The simplest way to satisfy the open access rules this is to apply the so-called rights retention strategy. The Bodleian have an excellent webpage explaining how to apply the rights retention strategy. In short,

1. Add the following statement to your manuscript before submission (probably in the funding section):
   
   For the purpose of open access, the author has applied a CC BY public copyright licence to any author accepted manuscript arising from this submission.
    
2. Submit to whichever journal you like.
    
3. If you upload to arXiv (recommended), choose a CC-BY license, which is now the top option on the list of licenses.
    
4. On acceptance, immediately deposit the author-accepted manuscript in Symplectic. Make sure to tick the Rights Retention Statement in Manuscript? box.

Lots of researchers are doing this, so the publishers are used to it, and you shouldn't have any trouble. But if you do, please contact the Bodleian open access team on @email.
 

Depositing your paper in ORA using Symplectic

Once your paper has been accepted for publication, you simply follow these instructions to deposit your paper in ORA using the Symplectic system (see single-sign-on login in top-right corner). 
 

Depositing data

The university's Policy on Research Data Management  requires us to store 'information needed to support or validate a research project’s observations, findings or outputs'. 
If your publications have associated research data, you can store them by uploading them to Symplectic. You can request a DOI for the data at the same time, so that you can cite it in your papers. 
For more details, see the departmental webpage on research data management. 
 

arXiv

We recommend you upload your manuscripts to arXiv at the same time as journal submission. While not mandatory, this allows for the widest dissemination of our research. When uploading, apply the CC-BY license.

Once the article is accepted for publication in a journal, you should update the arXiv record to include this information. Add a comment that the version uploaded is the 'author accepted manuscript'. See the arxiv help pages for more information.

Support from the Bodleian

The open access policy environment is quite complex. The Bodleian Libraries has an open access team at @email. They are keen to help with advice on OA requirements and the options available, including sources of publication funds, using rights retention, conversations with co-authors about OA costs, and on the relationship between OA and Intellectual Property.