The Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) has a new policy for the post-2014 Research Excellence Framework (REF).
The following outputs must be Open Access to be eligible for submission to the next REF:
- journal articles, and
- conference proceedings with an ISSN
- which have been accepted for publication after 1 April 2016
What you need to do
From April 2016 you must upload the author accepted manuscript of your paper to the Kent Academic Repository (KAR) within three months of publication.
From April 2017 you must upload the author accepted manuscript of your paper to KAR within three months of acceptance for publication. We strongly advise you to start following this requirement now.
You must also pay close attention to publisher embargoes. Those are the delays some publishers impose before repositories can make manuscripts openly available.
Why it’s important
If an article or conference proceeding doesn’t comply with the HEFCE criteria and has no valid exception recorded it will receive an unclassified score if submitted to the REF.
More information
- Information and guides on how to follow the REF requirements at the University of Kent
- For help and advice email the Information Services Research Support Team researchsupport@kent.ac.uk
- HEFCE have an FAQ page to complement their policy
You also need an ORCID
If you are a researcher, the University now requires you to register for an ORCID This is a stable and unique identifier which distinguishes you from other researchers. It ensures consistent, reliable attribution of your work.
See the Information Services ORCID page for more help.