On 11th December 2024, the four UK higher education funding bodies published it REF 2029 Open Access Policy. We have set out below a summary of the requirements.
KEY MESSAGE TO AUTHORS: Deposit your Author Accepted Manuscript (AAM) of all in scope outputs in to Durham Research Online at the point of acceptance for publication.
The open access requirements for REF2029 only apply to:
The specific requirements vary, determined by when the output was published.
MAXIMUM COMPLIANT EMBARGO PERIODS
Or
MAXIMUM COMPLIANT EMBARGO PERIODS
Or
* Appropriate Platform: As defined in PARA 4.0.5 of the policy. For Durham authors, this would usually be Durham Research Online, or another institutional or subject repository, or in a preprint server (such as arXiv, bioXiv or SocArXiv) where the version deposited is clearly the author’s accepted manuscript (AAM) or version of record (VoR).
** Open Licencing (for outputs published before 31 December 2025): Outputs licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Non-Derivative (CC BY-NC-ND) licence would meet the minimum requirement for open licencing.
*** Open Licencing (for outputs published after 1 January 2026): The funding bodies do not mandate a specific licence, but recommend outputs should be licenced as openly as possible, with a strong preference for a Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) licence. Outputs licensed under more restrictive licences, up to and including a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Non-Derivative (CC BY-NC-ND) licence, would still meet the minimum requirement for open licencing.
Consider your options for ensuring your paper will be available in an open access form, in line with the requirements for REF2029. Contact us at dro.admin@durham.ac.uk if you need advice or assistance.
Deposit your accepted manuscript in Durham Research Online (DRO). You can do this by:
The DRO Team will check and update the output record, check the publisher's repository policy and deposit your manuscript file.
Please ensure that any Durham co-authors are linked to the record in Worktribe, which enables its display on their Durham University staff profile as well as yours.
Further support and guidance can be found on the Worktribe Outputs Guide.
Please see our REF Open Access Exceptions Guide for further information.
Please see our REF Open Access FAQs Guide for further information.
The University submitted its response to the consultation on proposed changes to the REF Open Access Policy. The full text of our response can be found here.
This response was submitted following a University wide invitation to provide feedback both online and at events run in person. An initial draft response was then reviewed by the University's REF Advisory Committee and the University's Research Committee (both chaired by Pro-Vice-Chancellor (Research) Professor Colin Bain), and the University's Open Scholarship Group (chaired by Professor Fuschia Sirois) as well as being circulated for comment to all department Directors of Research.
REF 2029 Open Access Policy (REF 2029 website, full policy)
