Following on from extensive consultation throughout 2013, HEFCE have recently unveiled their policy on the role of Open Access (OA) publishing in the next Research Excellence Framework (REF).
HEFCE’s position is that the research they fund should be as widely and freely available as possible, and that OA presents a useful means of achieving that goal. With this in mind, they have decided to use the next REF exercise as a means to accelerate the adoption of OA publishing in the HE sector.
In a nutshell, HEFCE now requires the following:
- To be eligible for submission to the REF, journal articles and some conference proceedings will need to have their full text made available on an institutional or subject repository (i.e. green route OA) within three months of acceptance for publication.
- In cases where the full text of a research publication can’t be made freely available in this time frame (e.g. where a publisher’s agreement forbids it), the full text should be made accessible as soon as possible.
- Other types of publication are unaffected by this policy and will still be eligible for REF submission. Additionally, HEFCE have also provided a set of circumstances where exceptions may be made to the policy.
Full documentation for the policy can be found here. With this publication, HEFCE have posed some interesting new challenges for higher education institutions – but they have also provided an exciting opportunity for the growth of OA publication in UK Higher Education.
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