REF 2029 Open Access Compliance Criteria Changes

In January 2026, REF 2029 will introduce changes to the open access compliance criteria for journal articles and conference papers published with an ISSN.

Currently a journal article or conference paper needs to meet the following criteria:

• Deposited in an institutional repository within 3 months of acceptance by the publishing venue
• Made available on open access within either 12 months of first publication (for material going to REF panels A & B) or within 24 months of first publication (for material going to REF panels C & D)
• Made available on open access with a licence for reuse that is no more restrictive than the CC BY-NC-ND licence

Journal articles and conference papers that are published from 1 Jan 2026 will need to meet the following criteria:

• Deposited in an institutional repository within 3 months of first publication by the publishing venue
• Made available on open access within either 6 months of first publication (for material going to REF panels A & B) or within 12 months of first publication (for material submitted to REF panels C & D)
• Made available on open access with a licence for reuse that is no more restrictive than the CC BY-NC-ND licence

First publication date is the first time the publisher makes the version of record of an article available. In many cases this will be the online publication date, when an article appears in advance of assignment to an issue and physical publications.

A CC BY-NC-ND licence allows end users to copy, download and share a work, but not to create derivative works or to profit from sharing a work. The user must also attribute the original work in any reuse. Licences that would allow commercial use and/or creation of derivative works would also be in line with REF 2029 policy and would demonstrate a commitment to open research ideals.

It is still recommended, even after the new rules come in to effect, that authors deposit a copy of the accepted manuscript of a work in WIRE as soon as possible after acceptance to ensure compliance with REF policy so as not to miss any deadlines. Details on how to deposit material to WIRE is available on the WIRE webpage.

What does this mean for me?

The main impact on authors is the reduction in the maximum allowable embargo periods as this is usually governed by publisher green open access and self-archiving policies.

When choosing where to submit a manuscript, you can check the embargo periods of a journal using Jisc’s Open Policy Finder, or contact the Scholarly Communications Team if you would like confirmation of the embargo period being compliant with REF policy. If the embargo period exceeds those set in the compliance criteria, and the publication you chose was the most suitable venue, you can apply for an exception to the REF criteria, details of how to do so are on our REF policy webpage.

You can also use the university’s gold open access deals to publish journal articles on an open access basis, which will allow you to immediately meet the REF requirements. At the time of writing we have deals with 8 publishers that will cover the costs of publishing open access in a variety of journals. Researchers with grants that require them to publish on a gold open access basis may be able to tap into the University of Wolverhampton gold open access fund.