Supporting Open Access at Kent: REF Assisted Deposit Service

Written by Christine Buckley (Library Assistant, Scholarly Communications)

 

In support of Open Access week we are taking a look at some of the support and tools available at Kent to help you as a researcher; one of these is the REF Assisted Deposit Service. In this post I’m focusing on making the key information salient; if you’d like any more detail on Open Access requirements or the REF Assisted Deposit service please contact us.

What is Open Access?

Open Access means your research is made freely available, to a worldwide audience!

Why is this good?

Having your research made Open Access could help with:

  • The dissemination of your work.
  • Building your reputation.
  • Encouraging further developments in your field.

So how can the REF Assisted Deposit team help me?

 

We upload your item to KAR for you, ensuring that we are compliant in terms of:
1) Research Excellence Framework (REF) requirements
2) Copyright agreements

These considerations may sometimes cause barriers to making your research Open Access in the way you want. Our team are here to support you! Simply submit your recent publications onto our online form, for us to add to the Kent Academic Repository on your behalf. We will make sure all requirements are met for REF purposes whilst upholding copyright agreements.

What if I don’t want to use the form?

You don’t have to, we are here to support you in a way that benefits you most. The use of REF Assisted Deposit is entirely optional – if you prefer to add items to KAR yourself library staff will check these the day after upload and get in touch if there’s anything missing that’s required for REF compliance.

What else does this service offer?

We also monitor databases such as Scopus and pull publications alerts from a number of the major publishers to help ensure that all Kent publications are being picked up in time. We can’t guarantee we’ll catch everything as these sources can take a while to update so we strongly encourage using the form. Please help us to help you – if you receive an email from us regarding a new publication that is not yet on KAR please send us your author manuscript/any dates we’ve requested so we can ensure your publications are on KAR within the 3 month window and can be used for the REF.

We can also offer advice and guidance on:

  • Using the Kent Academic Repository (KAR)
  • Article version types
  • Embargo periods
  • Conference items
  • Any other related queries

Please feel free to email us if you have any questions at all.