The REF 2029 open access policy requires journal articles and conference proceedings with an ISSN, published from 1 January 2026, to be deposited within three months of publication, made available within a 6-month embargo (Main Panels A and B) or 12-month embargo (Main Panels C and D), and licensed at least as openly as CC BY-NC-ND. This is markedly more permissive than Plan S, which bans embargoes outright and pushes for CC BY as the default licence. The two frameworks share a direction of travel but diverge on timing and licensing mechanics — this walkthrough maps exactly where.
The REF 2029 open access policy is the open-access eligibility requirement set out in Section 5 of the Research Excellence Framework 2029 guidance, published by the four UK higher education funding bodies and administered by Research England on behalf of UKRI. It determines whether a journal article or conference paper can be submitted for assessment at all — non-compliant outputs, absent an exception, are excluded from a unit’s submission.
- What is the REF 2029 open access policy?
- How do the REF 2029 eligibility requirements work?
- What does Plan S require on embargoes and licensing?
- REF 2029 vs Plan S: where the rules line up and diverge
- Answer-first Q&A
- Implications for institutions and researchers
What is the REF 2029 open access policy?
The REF 2029 open access policy sets the minimum conditions a journal article or conference contribution must meet to be eligible for submission to the UK’s Research Excellence Framework. It applies only to in-scope outputs with an ISSN published between 1 January 2021 and 31 December 2028; monographs, book chapters and other long-form outputs remain out of scope for this cycle. According to the REF 2029 guidance hub, the policy was originally published on 11 December 2024 and last updated 13 June 2025, following a formal consultation.
Two different rule-sets apply depending on publication date. Outputs published from 1 January 2021 to 31 December 2025 are assessed against a carried-over version of the REF 2021 requirements. Outputs published from 1 January 2026 onward fall under the revised, tighter requirements described below — this is the version that matters most for anyone publishing now.
How do the REF 2029 eligibility requirements work?
For outputs published from 1 January 2026, compliance rests on four linked conditions: deposit, discovery, access and licensing. Each must be satisfied unless a specific exception applies.
- Deposit: the Author Accepted Manuscript (AAM), or the Version of Record where the publication agreement permits, must be deposited in an institutional repository, subject repository or preprint server within three months of publication — a shift from REF 2021, where the clock started at acceptance rather than publication.
- Embargo: publishers may impose a closed-access period of up to 6 months for Main Panels A and B, and 12 months for Main Panels C and D, down from 12 and 24 months respectively under REF 2021.
- Access: once the embargo lapses, the output must be free to search, read and download by anyone with an internet connection.
- Licensing: the funding bodies’ stated preference is CC BY, but CC BY-NC, CC BY-ND and CC BY-NC-ND (or an equivalent standard of openness) are also accepted for outputs published between 1 January 2026 and 31 December 2028.
A tolerance allowance softens strict enforcement: per the REF 2029 guidance, a unit of assessment may submit up to 5% non-compliant in-scope outputs, or one non-compliant output, whichever is higher, at no detriment. Compliance is checked through a risk-based audit process modelled on REF 2021, where 10 institutions’ submissions were selected for second-stage audit and four data adjustments resulted.
What does Plan S require on embargoes and licensing?
Plan S is the open-access mandate launched in 2018 by cOAlition S, an international consortium of public and private research funders. Its ten core principles require that funded research be published immediately open access, with no permitted embargo period, and that outputs carry a CC BY licence by default — CC BY-SA or CC0 are tolerated in limited cases, but more restrictive terms such as CC BY-NC or CC BY-ND are not considered compliant.
Plan S also expects rights retention: authors, not publishers, should hold sufficient rights to make the accepted manuscript openly available regardless of any subscription-journal embargo a publisher tries to impose. This rights-retention strategy is the mechanism several UK funders — including UKRI — have adopted to enforce zero-embargo compliance without banning subscription-journal publication outright.
REF 2029 vs Plan S: where the rules line up and diverge
Both frameworks push toward the same destination — free, immediate, reusable access to publicly funded research — but REF 2029 gets there on a longer, more accommodating timetable than Plan S.
| Requirement | REF 2029 (outputs published 2026–2028) | Plan S (cOAlition S) |
|---|---|---|
| Embargo period | Up to 6 months (Panels A/B); up to 12 months (Panels C/D) | None permitted — immediate OA required |
| Licence floor | CC BY-NC-ND or equivalent minimum; CC BY preferred | CC BY required by default; CC BY-SA/CC0 tolerated exceptions |
| Deposit deadline | Within 3 months of publication | Immediate, at time of publication |
| Scope | Journal articles and conference papers with an ISSN only | All peer-reviewed outputs from funded research |
| Full-openness deadline | 1 January 2029 (CC BY-equivalent minimum becomes mandatory for all in-scope outputs) | Already in force |
| Enforcement | 5% tolerance band; risk-based audit | Funder-level grant compliance checks |
The convergence date is the detail most summaries of REF 2029 leave out. From 1 January 2029, the funding bodies require all future in-scope outputs to meet the full open-licensing standard — effectively the CC BY-equivalent floor Plan S has enforced since 2021 — “subject to any permissible exceptions.” Until then, outputs deposited under a restrictive publisher agreement are explicitly excused from the licensing standard provided they still meet deposit, discovery and access conditions, with no exception form required. That two-tier transition, not a flat comparison of embargo months, is the real story of how REF 2029 is closing the gap with Plan S.
Answer-first Q&A
What outputs are eligible for REF 2029?
Only journal articles and conference contributions with an ISSN, published between 1 January 2021 and 31 December 2028, fall inside the REF 2029 open access policy. Monographs, book chapters, datasets and preprints without an ISSN are welcomed as REF submissions but are not subject to this policy’s open access requirements.
What are the key changes for REF 2029?
From 1 January 2026, the funding bodies cut permitted embargo periods in half (6/12 months instead of 12/24), shifted the deposit trigger from acceptance to publication, and introduced explicit licensing minima (CC BY-NC-ND or equivalent) that did not exist under REF 2021 rules.
What period does REF 2029 cover?
The open access policy spans outputs published from 1 January 2021 to 31 December 2028, split into two rule sets: a REF-2021-style regime for 2021–2025 outputs, and the revised, stricter regime for outputs published from 2026 onward.
What is an open access policy?
An open access policy is a funder or assessment body’s formal requirement that research outputs be deposited, made discoverable and made free to read within defined conditions. Compliance is typically a precondition of funding eligibility or, as with REF 2029, of assessment eligibility itself.
Implications for institutions and researchers
For research administration teams, the practical shift is procedural as much as substantive: tracking date of publication rather than date of acceptance resets every deposit-deadline calculation library and repository teams have built around REF 2021. Institutions that already comply with UKRI’s Open Access Policy — in force for grant-funded outputs since 1 April 2022 — are well placed, since UKRI’s zero-embargo, CC BY-preferred terms already exceed the REF 2029 minimum.
Publishers negotiating UK author agreements should note the AAM carve-out: outputs deposited under a restrictive publication agreement escape licensing penalties until 2029, reducing near-term pressure but setting a hard deadline. Anyone drafting institutional guidance should also consult the CASRAI dictionary of open-research terms for precise definitions of AAM, Gold, Green and embargo, since REF 2029, UKRI and Plan S each scope these terms differently.
Looking ahead, the 1 January 2029 convergence date effectively puts REF on a collision course with Plan S’s zero-embargo, CC BY-default model — but only for licensing, not embargoes. Institutions with a five-year open access strategy should plan now for a licensing regime that will be materially stricter than anything REF has required to date, rather than treating 2026’s changes as the final word.
