April saw the implementation of the Decisions of Staff Outputs’ revised policy on open access on REF eligibility. Any journal article or conference proceeding with ISSN accepted for publication after 01/04/2018 must be deposited into the repository as close to the point acceptance as possible, and no more than three months after acceptance.
With this in mind, it was pleasing, therefore to see a congruent rate of deposit in April with 63 items deposited, compared to March (54), February (59), and January (56).
However, there are other conditions that must be met for REF eligibility according the policy for open access, which has been in place since 01/04/2016. Of particular note is the maximum embargo periods for different REF panels. For UoAs that fall under panels A and B, the embargo period cannot exceed 12 months, and for UoAs under Panels C and D, the embargo cannot exceed 24 months. For more details, please see out REF2021 FAQ
Elsevier have been particularly canny in this regard, having not set a blanket policy to accommodate author needs for REF, effectively strong-arming authors into gold open access for compliance with RCUK demands, too. As such, UoA 4 may need to pay particularly close attention to the embargo periods. We would strongly recommend using Sherpa/RoMEO for general guidance, and for publisher specific enquiries, please feel free to get in touch. (Elsevier’s current title embargoes list for UK-based authors as available here).
On the 16th of May, we are running a session on gold and free open access as part of the Research and Enterprise Office’s Brown Bag Lunch series. We’ll be talking about what open access is, why it has emerged, how it works, how to make your work available through various open access routes, and what this can do for authors and the University at large. Come to the Savoy Suite from 13:00-14:00, and don’t forget your lunch!