CASRAI Dictionary

Category: Policy & Funding News

Reporting and briefings on external policy, regulatory, and funder developments affecting the research community worldwide.

  • Barcelona Declaration on Open Research Information: What Signing Means for Institutions

    The Barcelona Declaration on Open Research Information is a voluntary commitment framework, launched on 16 April 2024, under which universities, funders and research infrastructures pledge to make the metadata behind research — publications, datasets, grants, contributor and organisation records — open by default rather than locked inside proprietary databases. Signing creates no legal obligation; it is a public statement of intent, tracked via a published signatory list and reinforced by an annual conference, next meeting in Berlin on 24–25 November 2026.

    The barcelona declaration on open research information is a companion reform track to the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA) and the Coalition for Advancing Research Assessment (CoARA): those two reform how research is assessed; this Declaration reforms the underlying information supply chain any assessment depends on.

    What is the Barcelona Declaration on Open Research Information?

    The Barcelona Declaration on Open Research Information is an international policy statement calling on organisations that carry out, fund or evaluate research to make “research information” — metadata about publications, datasets, software, funding and contributors — open, interoperable and FAIR by default. It was prepared by more than 25 research information specialists meeting in Barcelona in November 2023, hosted by the SIRIS Foundation, and launched publicly on 16 April 2024.

    Coordination sits with Bianca Kramer (Sesame Open Science), Cameron Neylon (Curtin Open Knowledge Initiative) and Ludo Waltman (Leiden University’s CWTS). Since January 2025, CWTS, Crossref and the SIRIS Foundation have jointly funded a coordination office for three years — an operating structure, not a one-off open letter.

    • As of this research (July 2026), the published signatory list names 146 organisations across 34 countries, plus international bodies such as the Coimbra Group and YERUN.
    • “Supporters” — infrastructure providers including ROR, DOAJ, COAR, LIBER, SPARC Europe and PLOS — back the Declaration without being signatories themselves.
    • Signatories span single universities (Leiden, Edinburgh, Bristol, Utrecht), national consortia (Udice, Universities of the Netherlands) and funders (Wellcome Trust, Austrian Science Fund, Dutch Research Council).

    Open, closed and restricted: how the Declaration defines research information

    “Research information” is the Declaration’s term for metadata — not the underlying publication, dataset or software itself, but data about it: titles, abstracts, author and affiliation data, funding details, and organisation identifiers. The Declaration treats openness of this metadata as a spectrum rather than a binary switch.

    Category Definition (per the Declaration) Named examples
    Open research information Free to access and free of reuse restrictions; ideally FAIR (findable, accessible, interoperable, reusable) and carrying a CC0 waiver OpenAlex, OpenCitations, OpenAIRE, Crossref, DataCite, ORCID
    Closed research information Locked inside proprietary infrastructure with severe reuse restrictions, typically paywalled Web of Science, Scopus (both named directly by the Declaration’s background text)
    Restricted (conditionally open) research information Information that cannot ethically be made fully open — chiefly for privacy reasons — and should instead be handled under “as open as possible, as closed as necessary” Aggregated, privacy-sensitive contributor or assessment data, assessed case by case against relevant regulation

    This is not an all-or-nothing pledge. Signing requires a default presumption of openness, with narrow, justified exceptions — not publishing everything.

    The four commitments signatories make

    Every signatory commits to the same four points, set out on the Declaration’s commitments page, moving from internal default to supplier requirements to infrastructure funding to collective governance.

    • Commitment 1 — openness by default. Research information used (for assessment, funding, discovery) and produced (about its own activities) becomes open by default, with privacy-based exceptions handled case by case.
    • Commitment 2 — open-enabling systems. Publishing platforms and internal current research information systems (CRIS) must make relevant metadata exportable and open, using standard identifiers.
    • Commitment 3 — infrastructure sustainability. The organisation contributes fairly to the financial stability and governance of open scholarly infrastructures, expecting them to follow the Principles of Open Scholarly Infrastructure (POSI).
    • Commitment 4 — collective action. The organisation backs a proposed Coalition for Open Research Information, coordinating with related initiatives rather than acting alone.

    How it fits with CoARA, DORA and the European Research Area

    The Barcelona Declaration is deliberately positioned as complementary to, not competing with, the research-assessment reform movement. Its own background text cites DORA, supported by roughly 3,000 organisations and more than 20,000 individuals globally, and CoARA, whose agreement more than 600 organisations have joined, as evidence that “support for open research information is rapidly increasing.”

    Framework Primary focus Launched Reported scale
    Barcelona Declaration on Open Research Information Openness of the metadata underlying research assessment and discovery 16 Apr 2024 146 signatories, 34+ countries
    DORA (San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment) Reforming how research outputs and researchers are evaluated 2012 ~3,000 organisations, 20,000+ individuals
    CoARA (Coalition for Advancing Research Assessment) Reforming assessment criteria and career-evaluation practice, largely EU-driven 2022 600+ organisations

    The overlap with the European Research Area policy agenda is direct. The EU Council has adopted conclusions on research assessment and open science stating that “data and bibliographic databases used for research assessment should, in principle, be openly accessible” — language the Declaration cites as its own rationale. For institutions already reporting into CoARA or Horizon Europe open-science requirements, signing supplies the open-infrastructure layer responsible assessment reform depends on, not a separate compliance track.

    What signing meant for The Guild and Maastricht University

    Two recent signings show what commitment looks like at different institutional scales.

    The Guild of European Research-Intensive Universities, a network of research-intensive universities across Europe, joined as an international signatory (announced 28 May 2026) — committing its member network collectively to advocate for open research information, rather than acting through one campus policy.

    Maastricht University signed on 12 June 2026, when Rector Magnificus Jan Smits put his name to the Declaration during the first Open Science Festival Limburg. UM had already taken a concrete Commitment-2-style step beforehand: it invested in an OpenAlex partner subscription and announced it will end its Scopus licence from 2027, explicitly framing the move as reducing reliance on closed, proprietary research information systems. UM says the Declaration reinforces its existing Open Science and Recognition & Rewards ambitions and will keep shaping its reporting and assessment practices.

    Frequently asked questions

    What is the Barcelona Declaration on Open Research Information?

    It is a voluntary policy declaration, launched 16 April 2024, under which research organisations, funders and infrastructures commit to making metadata about publications, data, software and funding open by default. It has no regulatory force; its four commitments are tracked through a public signatory list rather than enforced sanctions.

    Is signing the Barcelona Declaration legally binding?

    No. Like DORA and CoARA, it is a principle-based commitment, not a regulation or contract. Signatories self-report progress, and accountability comes from public visibility — the signatory list, national networks and the annual conference — rather than from any enforcement or certification mechanism.

    How does the Barcelona Declaration differ from CoARA and DORA?

    DORA and CoARA target how researchers and outputs are assessed; the Barcelona Declaration targets the metadata infrastructure any assessment relies on. Institutions frequently sign more than one — the commitments are explicitly framed as reinforcing each other, not substitutes.

    Implications for research offices weighing whether to sign

    For a research administration office, signing is a two-stage decision. First, an audit question: does current research information — CRIS exports, assessment data sources, publisher metadata agreements — already lean on closed, subscription-gated infrastructure such as Web of Science or Scopus, and what would shifting toward open alternatives (OpenAlex, OpenAIRE, Crossref, ORCID, ROR) cost operationally?

    Second, a governance question: signing is public, and Commitment 2 carries procurement implications — new publisher and system contracts should require exportable, open metadata rather than closed defaults. Institutions already committed to CoARA or Horizon Europe open-science requirements will find the overlap works in their favour.

    The 2026 conference — themed “Aligning policy and practical implementation,” held 24–25 November 2026 at the Leibniz Association headquarters in Berlin and online, with its call for proposals open until 1 September 2026 — signals where the Declaration is heading: from a statement of intent toward shared, documented implementation practice. Research offices that sign now join that practice-sharing track from the start, rather than adopting a more settled framework later with less influence over how it develops.

  • REF 2029 Initial Decisions: What UKRI Confirmed and What’s Still Open for Consultation

    The REF 2029 initial decisions, published in 2023, confirmed decoupled outputs, HESA-based volume measures and no per-researcher output limits. On 10 December 2025, UKRI and Research England locked in revised element weightings and simplified guidance after an autumn pause – but the detailed Panel Criteria and Working Methods remain unpublished until Autumn 2026.

    The Research Excellence Framework (REF) is the UK’s system for assessing the quality and impact of research produced by higher education institutions, with REF 2029 the next exercise in the series and results due for publication in December 2029.

    What did the original REF 2029 Initial Decisions confirm in 2023?

    The four UK higher education funding bodies published Research Excellence Framework 2029: initial decisions and issues for further consultation (reference REF 2023/01) after reaching agreement through the Future Research Assessment Programme Board. This document set the high-level architecture that everything since has built on.

    Three assessment elements were renamed and reweighted to reflect a broader definition of research excellence: the outputs element became Contribution to Knowledge and Understanding, the environment element became People, Culture and Environment, and the impact element became Engagement and Impact. The funding bodies also confirmed that REF 2029 would move further away from assessing individuals, replacing staff-linked output counts with a volume measure drawn directly from Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA) staff records.

    • Outputs decoupled from individual researchers under a “substantive link” policy tying outputs to the submitting institution instead.
    • No minimum or maximum number of outputs per individual, intended to widen inclusivity for early-career and returning researchers.
    • Unit-of-assessment structure retained largely as in REF 2021.
    • A short, targeted consultation on specific policy aspects launched immediately, alongside a discrete Open Access policy consultation.

    What changed when REF 2029 resumed after the 2025 pause?

    REF 2029 criteria-setting was paused in autumn 2025, following an announcement by UK Science Minister Lord Vallance that final guidance and Panel Criteria and Working Methods would not proceed to publication on the original schedule. On 10 December 2025, the REF team and the four funding bodies published updates confirming the exercise had resumed, shaped by further engagement with the sector and the expert REF panels.

    The People, Culture and Environment element was renamed again, to Strategy, People and Research Environment (SPRE), building on the REF 2021 Environment component and informed by the People, Culture and Environment Pilot report published the same day. Several simplifications were confirmed to reduce burden on institutions:

    • Contribution to Knowledge and Understanding (CKU) guidance simplified and clarified, with unit-level statements removed.
    • A recommended maximum of five outputs per researcher reinstated for clarity, while the minimum of one stays removed.
    • Impact case study requirements reduced to one for the smallest units, and the 2* qualifying threshold for underpinning research removed.
    • Limited portability introduced for long-form and extended-process research outputs, alongside simplified substantive-link requirements.

    Crucially, the funding bodies decided there would be no formal consultation on the guidance or the Panel Criteria and Working Methods, in order to protect the original timetable. REF 2029 panels began meeting in early 2026 to set criteria, and an Institutional-Level Working Group for SPRE is being established.

    How do the confirmed REF 2029 weightings compare at each stage?

    The element weightings moved between the 2023 Initial Decisions and the December 2025 update, reflecting sector feedback and the results of the PCE Pilot. Research England’s own framing is definitive: the funding bodies “refined these weightings having listened to the sector and considered the results of the PCE Pilot.”

    Element 2023 Initial Decisions weighting Confirmed 10 Dec 2025 weighting
    Strategy, People and Research Environment (formerly People, Culture and Environment) 25% 20%
    Contribution to Knowledge and Understanding 50% 55%
    Engagement and Impact 25% 25% (unchanged)

    REF underpins the allocation of roughly £2 billion annually in UK research funding, according to the REF team’s December 2025 announcement, which is why the funding bodies have prioritised timetable stability over a further round of formal consultation on these revised figures.

    Which REF 2029 questions remain open ahead of criteria publication?

    Despite the pace of confirmations through December 2025, the granular assessment criteria that panels and institutions ultimately submit against are not yet public. Per the REF 2029 timetable (last updated 10 December 2025), the sector is currently in the “onboarding of sub-panels” and “expert panels meet to develop guidance” phase covering winter, spring and summer 2026.

    • Panel Criteria and Working Methods – the unit-of-assessment-level detail institutions need for submission planning – is scheduled for Autumn 2026, not before.
    • The Institutional-Level Working Group for SPRE has not yet reported; its recommendations will shape how the 20%-weighted element is actually assessed.
    • The special requests process for exceptional submission circumstances launches only in the 2026-2027 winter window.
    • A long-form-output open access mandate was explicitly ruled out for REF 2029 itself but remains under discussion for the exercise that follows it.
    • Because the funding bodies opted out of formal consultation on the guidance and Panel Criteria and Working Methods, sector input on these final documents will run through panel and steering-group engagement rather than a published open call for responses.

    Answer-first Q&A on REF 2029

    What are the key changes for REF 2029?

    REF 2029 renames and reweights the three assessment elements, decouples outputs from named individuals under a substantive-link policy, replaces staff-linked output counts with a HESA-derived volume measure, and removes per-researcher output minimums while reinstating a recommended maximum of five outputs.

    What is the REF 2029 process?

    Institutions build submissions against Contribution to Knowledge and Understanding, Strategy, People and Research Environment, and Engagement and Impact, following Panel Criteria and Working Methods due in Autumn 2026. The submission window opens autumn 2027, closes autumn 2028, with results published December 2029.

    How many impact case studies are required for REF 2029?

    The December 2025 update reduced the impact case study requirement to a minimum of one for the smallest submitting units, retaining the REF 2021-style approach otherwise, and removed the 2* qualifying threshold previously applied to underpinning research.

    What publications are eligible for REF 2029?

    Outputs are eligible where they have a demonstrable substantive link to the submitting institution during the REF period, rather than being tied to a named individual’s employment dates, with simplified requirements and limited portability for long-form and extended-process research outputs.

    What the REF 2029 timeline means for institutions

    Research administrators cannot yet finalise submission strategy against unit-of-assessment-level criteria that do not exist in published form. What institutions can act on now are the settled structural decisions: the HESA-based volume measure, the substantive-link output policy, the five-output guideline, and the confirmed 20/55/25 weighting split.

    Because no formal consultation will precede the Autumn 2026 Final Guidance, the practical channel for institutional input is direct engagement with REF panels and the Institutional-Level Working Group for SPRE, not a published response process. This is a materially different sector-engagement model from the 2023-2024 Initial Decisions consultation and the 2024 Open Access consultation, both of which invited written responses.

    These structural questions sit alongside, but are distinct from, contributorship and authorship-attribution debates addressed by frameworks such as the authorship standards used elsewhere in scholarly communication, and the broader discipline of research administration that REF submission planning falls under.

    Outlook: REF 2029 heading toward Autumn 2026 Final Guidance

    REF 2029 has moved from broad principle to confirmed structure faster than its criteria have moved to publishable detail. The Initial Decisions set direction in 2023; the December 2025 update, following the 2025 pause, fixed weightings and simplified several requirements. What remains – the Panel Criteria and Working Methods – is the document institutions actually need to plan submissions, and it will not arrive before Autumn 2026. Until then, “REF 2029 initial decisions” describes a settled foundation, not a finished rulebook.

  • REF 2029 Timeline: Panel Criteria to Submission

    The REF 2029 timeline runs from the 2023 “Initial Decisions” consultation through panel criteria-setting in 2026, a submission window opening in autumn 2027, a final submission deadline in autumn 2028, and publication of results in December 2029. The Research Excellence Framework (REF) is the UK’s system for assessing research quality across higher education institutions, run jointly by the four UK higher education funding bodies through Research England.

    Research administrators planning REF 2029 submissions need more than a single headline date — they need the full sequence: when criteria are finalised, when the output and impact eligibility periods start and end, when panels are recruited, and when institutions must submit. This guide lays out that end-to-end schedule in order, drawing on the official REF 2029 timetable published by Research England.

    What is the REF 2029 timeline, in brief?

    REF 2029 is the UK’s next national research assessment exercise, following REF 2021. It was originally planned as “REF 2028” but was renamed REF 2029 in December 2023 after Research England extended the schedule to allow more development time for new assessment elements. Under the current timetable, published by Research England’s REF 2029 site and last updated 10 December 2025, final results are scheduled for publication in December 2029.

    The exercise unfolds in four broad phases: policy and panel-building (2023–2025), criteria finalisation (2026), submission (2027–2028), and results and data publication (2029–2030). Each phase carries distinct deadlines that institutional REF leads need to track separately, since panel criteria, output/impact eligibility windows, and submission logistics are set on different clocks.

    2023–2025: policy development and panel recruitment

    The groundwork for REF 2029 began years before any submission window opened. Research England published “Initial Decisions” in summer 2023, setting out the high-level design of the next exercise, followed by a consultation period. In December 2023, the funding bodies confirmed the exercise would be renamed REF 2029, with results due in December 2029 rather than the originally planned 2028.

    Panel and policy work then proceeded on a rolling basis:

    • Spring 2024 — advisory panel recruitment opened alongside a consultation on the REF 2029 Open Access policy.
    • Summer 2024 — Expert Panel recruitment began, and a web-based policy publication approach was introduced.
    • Autumn/Winter 2024–2025 — the Open Access Policy and Volume Measure guidance (with associated Codes of Practice guidance) were published.
    • Summer 2025 — draft “Contributions to Knowledge and Understanding” guidance was published, and full Expert Panel membership was announced ahead of the criteria-setting phase.

    In September 2025, Research England announced a pause to REF 2029 criteria setting and the publication of final guidance, stating that any changes to the exercise would be announced by December 2025. On 10 December 2025, REF 2029 resumed: weightings were confirmed, the People, Culture and Environment (PCE) pilot report and indicators report were published, and updated Strategy, People and Research Environment (SPRE) and Engagement and Impact guidance followed. SPRE replaces the PCE element trialled in the pilot and builds on the REF 2021 Environment component — the single most significant structural change carried into REF 2029.

    2026: panel criteria setting and final guidance

    2026 is the year sub-panels finalise the rules institutions will submit against. Across winter, spring and summer 2026, sub-panels complete onboarding and Expert Panels meet to develop detailed assessment criteria and working methods, building on the guidance sections published through 2025.

    Research England has confirmed there will be no formal public consultation on this final guidance and the Panel Criteria and Working Methods — a deliberate step to protect the compressed schedule after the 2025 pause. Final Guidance on Submissions and the Panel Criteria and Working Methods documents are scheduled for publication in autumn 2026, giving institutions roughly a year’s notice before the submission window opens. Anonymised REF 2029 Steering Group and Panel meeting minutes and papers covering January 2023 to September 2026 are planned for publication in December 2026.

    2027–2028: submission window and census dates

    The submission phase is where planning turns into deadlines. Research England’s schedule sets out:

    • Winter 2026/2027 — the special requests process (for individual staff circumstances affecting output/impact counts) launches.
    • Spring 2027 — the survey of submission intentions opens, giving institutions an early formal checkpoint to signal likely unit-of-assessment submissions.
    • Summer 2027 — the survey of submission intentions and the special requests process both close.
    • Autumn 2027 — additional recruitment for assessment-phase panels takes place, and the submission window opens.
    • Autumn 2028 — the final submission deadline falls, and the formal assessment phase begins immediately afterwards.

    Running alongside the submission window are the fixed eligibility (census) periods that determine which staff, outputs and impact activity can be submitted. Research England’s published parameters set the output eligibility period from 1 January 2021 to 31 December 2028, and the impact assessment period from 1 August 2020 to 31 July 2028, with underpinning research for impact case studies eligible from as early as 1 January 2008. These dates are distinct from the submission deadline itself: an output can be eligible for REF 2029 without the submission window for that unit of assessment yet being open, and administrators should track eligibility and submission-window dates as two separate schedules, not one.

    REF 2029: submission-phase milestones vs. eligibility periods
    Milestone or period Scheduled date What it governs
    Survey of submission intentions Spring–Summer 2027 Early signal of institutional submission plans
    Submission window opens Autumn 2027 Institutions may begin formal submission
    Output eligibility (census) period 1 Jan 2021 – 31 Dec 2028 Which research outputs qualify
    Impact assessment period 1 Aug 2020 – 31 Jul 2028 Which impact activity qualifies
    Underpinning research window (impact) From 1 Jan 2008 Earliest eligible research behind an impact case study
    Final submission deadline Autumn 2028 Last date to submit; assessment phase begins

    2029–2030: results and data publication

    Once submissions close in autumn 2028, the four expert main panels and their sub-panels assess outputs, impact case studies, and Strategy, People and Research Environment (formerly Environment/PCE) statements. Publication of REF 2029 results and quality profiles is planned for December 2029, the terminal date from which the exercise takes its name.

    Data and transparency publications follow in the new year: publication of submitted data and full final reports — including REF 2029 Steering Group and Panel meeting minutes and papers covering October 2026 to December 2029 — is planned for March 2030. Results inform the subsequent allocation of block-grant quality-related (QR) research funding across UK higher education institutions, in the same way REF 2021 outcomes shaped funding allocations from 2022 onward.

    Common REF 2029 timeline questions

    What period does REF 2029 cover?

    REF 2029 covers research outputs produced between 1 January 2021 and 31 December 2028, and impact activity between 1 August 2020 and 31 July 2028, underpinned by research eligible from 1 January 2008. The submission deadline falls in autumn 2028, with results published in December 2029.

    What are the key changes for REF 2029?

    The most significant change is the replacement of the REF 2021 “Environment” element and the piloted “People, Culture and Environment” (PCE) approach with a new Strategy, People and Research Environment (SPRE) element. Other changes include revised Contributions to Knowledge and Understanding guidance, updated volume measure rules using HESA data, and a renamed, delayed exercise (originally “REF 2028”).

    What is the REF 2029 strategy element?

    The Strategy, People and Research Environment (SPRE) guidance assesses whether an institution’s research environment enables diverse, excellent research, supports its people, and contributes positively to the wider research ecosystem and society. It builds directly on the REF 2021 Environment component rather than replacing it wholesale.

    Is it REF 2028 or REF 2029?

    It is REF 2029. Research England originally planned the next exercise as “REF 2028,” but in December 2023, following consultation, it confirmed an extension to the timing, renaming the exercise REF 2029 with results now scheduled for December 2029 rather than 2028.

    Implications for research administrators

    Because REF 2029 combines a compressed criteria-setting phase (following the 2025 pause) with a submission window that does not open until autumn 2027, institutions have a narrower practical planning window than REF 2021 offered at the equivalent stage. Research offices should treat the autumn 2026 final guidance publication as the trigger point for internal REF preparation — code of practice reviews, output and impact case study identification, and HESA data reconciliation — rather than waiting for the submission window itself to open.

    Tracking the output eligibility period (2021–2028) separately from the submission window (2027–2028) also matters operationally: outputs published early in the eligibility period may need portability and authorship documentation gathered well before any submission system opens, particularly where staff move institutions during the assessment cycle.

    What to watch next

    The next fixed points on the REF 2029 timeline are the autumn 2026 final guidance publication, the spring 2027 survey of submission intentions, and the autumn 2027 submission window opening. Given the September–December 2025 pause already shifted internal milestones once, institutions should monitor Research England’s published timetable directly for further updates rather than relying on a fixed date without a recheck.

  • REF 2029 Pause Lifted: Criteria Setting Resumes

    The REF 2029 pause ended on 10 December 2025. The UK’s four higher education funding bodies confirmed the criteria-setting phase — halted for three months after a September 2025 ministerial announcement — has resumed, with updated guidance published and expert panels set to begin meeting in early 2026 to finalise assessment criteria. The overall submission deadline of autumn 2028 is unchanged.

    The Research Excellence Framework (REF) is the UK’s system for assessing the quality, impact and environment of research produced by higher education institutions, with outcomes used to allocate roughly £2 billion in annual research funding across the four nations. REF 2029 is the fourth full exercise, following REF 2014 and REF 2021, and results are due in December 2029.

    What was the REF 2029 pause and why did it happen?

    On 4 September 2025, UK Science Minister Lord Vallance announced a pause to REF 2029 criteria setting at the Universities UK annual conference. The same day, the four UK higher education funding bodies — Research England, the Scottish Funding Council, Medr (Wales’ Commission for Tertiary Education and Research), and the Department for the Economy, Northern Ireland — jointly confirmed the pause in a statement describing it as an opportunity to “take stock, ensure alignment with government priorities and vision for higher education, and reflect on feedback from the sector.”

    The funding bodies were explicit that the overall REF timetable would not be delayed, even though the pause affected specific milestones: publication of final guidance modules and the REF 2029 Code of Practice approval process were both pushed back, with institutional REF contacts notified about revised Code of Practice submission windows. Panel members for the criteria-setting phase were appointed on the same day the pause was announced, so that work could resume quickly once the framework was finalised. The funding bodies committed to announcing the outcome by December 2025 — a commitment they met.

    What changed when REF 2029 resumed in December 2025?

    On 10 December 2025, REF 2029 published a package of updates confirming the pause had lifted and criteria setting had resumed. The most substantive change was to the assessment element formerly called People, Culture and Environment (PCE), which has been renamed Strategy, People and Research Environment (SPRE). SPRE builds on the REF 2021 Environment component and draws directly on findings from the People, Culture and Environment Pilot, whose final report was published the same day.

    The funding bodies also refined the weightings across all three assessment elements. In line with feedback from the sector and the pilot’s results, the final split is:

    Assessment element REF 2029 weighting (confirmed 10 Dec 2025) Notes
    Contributions to Knowledge and Understanding (CKU) 55% Simplified and clarified; unit-level statements removed
    Engagement and Impact (E&I) 25% Broadly retained from REF 2021; unit-level statements removed
    Strategy, People and Research Environment (SPRE) 20% Replaces PCE; builds on REF 2021 Environment component

    Other confirmed simplifications reduce reporting burden without reopening the core Initial Decisions on REF 2029 published in 2023. The recommended maximum of five outputs per researcher is reinstated for clarity, but the minimum of one has been removed to avoid pressure on individual researchers. Outputs remain decoupled from individuals under the substantive link policy, with simplified requirements and limited portability introduced for long-form and extended-process research outputs. Impact case study requirements are reduced to one for the smallest submitting units, and the 2* qualifying threshold for underpinning research has been removed.

    • Unit-level statements removed from both CKU and Engagement and Impact
    • Maximum of five outputs per researcher reinstated; minimum of one removed
    • Impact case study minimum reduced to one for the smallest units
    • Limited portability for long-form and extended-process outputs, alongside continued decoupling under the substantive link policy
    • Small-unit exemption process retained from REF 2021, with expanded eligibility

    What did UKRI and Research England confirm about the 2026 restart?

    Research England, acting on behalf of all four funding bodies, confirmed that REF panels will begin meeting in early 2026 to set detailed criteria and finalise the Panel Criteria and Working Methods documents. An Institutional-Level Working Group dedicated to the new SPRE element will also be established as part of this restart.

    Notably, the funding bodies confirmed there will be no formal consultation on the resulting guidance or on the Panel Criteria and Working Methods, a deliberate choice made “to maintain the original timetable.” This is a material procedural difference from REF 2021, where panel criteria went through public consultation before finalisation — institutions should not expect a further comment period before criteria are locked in during 2026. The REF team and funding bodies have said they will continue engaging with the sector through other channels as the panels do this work.

    REF 2029 Director Rebecca Fairbairn described the exercise as “a framework built with and for the sector,” while Universities UK chief executive Vivienne Stern said the sector “strongly welcome[s] this pragmatic approach,” calling it evidence that “the four UK funding bodies have listened carefully to researchers and universities.”

    What does this mean for institutional planning timelines?

    For research offices, the practical headline is that the submission deadline has not moved: REF 2029 submissions remain due in autumn 2028, with results published in December 2029. What has moved is the sequencing of guidance institutions need in order to plan.

    Milestone Date
    REF 2029 (originally REF 2028) confirmed and renamed December 2023 (Initial Decisions)
    Pause to criteria setting and final guidance announced 4-5 September 2025
    Updated guidance published; pause lifted; criteria setting resumes 10 December 2025
    REF panels begin meeting to set criteria and finalise guidance Early 2026
    Institutional submission deadline Autumn 2028
    Results published December 2029

    Because there will be no formal consultation on the criteria panels finalise from early 2026, institutional REF strategy groups have a narrower window than in previous cycles to influence detail before it is locked in. Research offices should treat the December 2025 guidance updates — CKU, Engagement and Impact, SPRE, and Code of Practice sections — as the operative baseline for internal planning now, rather than waiting for a further consultation round that will not occur.

    The revised Code of Practice approval process and submission windows, delayed during the pause, are now confirmed and should be diarised alongside internal REF strategy group timetables. Institutions holding PCE pilot evidence should map it against the new SPRE guidance rather than starting from scratch, since SPRE is built directly on the REF 2021 Environment component and the pilot findings.

    Frequently asked questions

    What period does REF 2029 cover?

    REF 2029 assesses research activity, outputs, impact and environment across a defined assessment period running up to the autumn 2028 submission deadline, with results published in December 2029. Exact census and output period dates are set out in the REF 2029 timetable, updated alongside the December 2025 guidance following the pause.

    What are the key changes for REF 2029?

    The confirmed changes include renaming People, Culture and Environment to Strategy, People and Research Environment (SPRE), revised weightings of 55% CKU, 25% Engagement and Impact and 20% SPRE, removal of unit-level statements, a reinstated five-output maximum, and reduced impact case study minimums for smaller units.

    Is it REF 2028 or REF 2029?

    The exercise was originally planned as REF 2028. Following consultation, the funding bodies confirmed in December 2023 that the timeline would extend, renaming it REF 2029, with submissions in autumn 2028 and results published in December 2029.

    What is the REF 2029 strategy element?

    Strategy, People and Research Environment (SPRE) is the REF 2029 element, weighted at 20%, that assesses institutional research strategy, support for people, and the wider research environment. It builds on the REF 2021 Environment component and incorporates findings from the People, Culture and Environment Pilot.

    The restart confirms that REF 2029 remains on its original autumn 2028 submission timeline despite the 2025 pause, but with a compressed, consultation-free path from panel criteria-setting in early 2026 through to finalised guidance. Institutions that treat the December 2025 updates as settled — rather than provisional — will be best placed to align internal REF strategy group planning, Code of Practice submissions, and SPRE evidence-gathering with the funding bodies’ revised sequence.

  • National Data Repository Mandates: UK, US, EU

    National data repository requirements now differ sharply by jurisdiction: the UK coordinates through UKRI’s Concordat on Open Research Data and a planned National Data Library, the US relies on agency-specific mandates such as the NIH Data Management and Sharing Policy layered on the OPEN Government Data Act, and the EU binds Horizon Europe funding to mandatory FAIR data management plans routed through the European Open Science Cloud. All three converge on the FAIR principles as the technical baseline, but they diverge sharply on enforcement, centralisation and what “as open as possible” means in practice.

    A national data repository is a government- or funder-endorsed infrastructure (or federated network of infrastructures) for depositing, curating and providing persistent access to datasets produced by publicly funded research, so that they meet the FAIR standard of being Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable. No single global rulebook defines what such a repository must look like — which is precisely why the UK, US and EU have built three structurally different systems around the same FAIR foundation.

    What counts as a national data repository?

    A national data repository is infrastructure, endorsed at government or funder level, that stores research datasets with persistent identifiers, standardised metadata and defined reuse licences. The FAIR data principles — first formalised in Scientific Data in 2016 — define the technical bar: data and metadata must be findable via persistent identifiers, accessible over open protocols, interoperable through shared vocabularies, and reusable under clear provenance and licensing.

    Crucially, FAIR does not mean unconditionally open. The dominant policy language across all three jurisdictions is some variant of “as open as possible, as closed as necessary” — datasets with legitimate privacy, security or intellectual-property constraints can remain FAIR while access to the raw data itself stays restricted, provided the metadata is still discoverable.

    How does the UK mandate research data repositories?

    The UK’s approach is coordinated centrally through UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) rather than fragmented across individual funders. The Concordat on Open Research Data, agreed by UK funders and sector bodies, sets the expectation that publicly funded research data should be made openly available with as few restrictions as possible, in a timely and responsible manner.

    UKRI has been developing a harmonised open research data policy to replace the varying requirements previously set by its individual research councils, with a more explicit alignment to FAIR principles than the original Concordat text. The UK does not run one single mandatory repository for all disciplines; instead it combines a cross-disciplinary resource — the UK Data Service, holding the country’s largest collection of economic, population and social research data — with discipline-specific data centres. A National Data Library initiative is also under development. Enforcement runs through grant conditions rather than statute.

    How does the US enforce data-sharing requirements?

    The US combines a government-wide legal baseline with agency-specific enforcement, producing a federated rather than centralised system. The OPEN Government Data Act codifies the principle that federal government data — including federally funded research outputs captured by agencies — should be open and machine-readable by default, operationalised through the Data.gov catalogue.

    The sharpest enforcement sits with individual funding agencies. Under the NIH Data Management and Sharing (DMS) Policy, effective since January 2023, NIH-funded researchers must submit a DMS Plan describing how scientific data will be managed and shared, with FAIR principles strongly encouraged. The National Science Foundation requires a Data Management Plan for all proposals and supports deposit through disciplinary repositories and its own NSF Public Access Repository (NSF-PAR). This gives communities flexibility to choose fitting repositories, at the cost of one unified national research-data repository.

    How does the EU mandate FAIR data through Horizon Europe?

    The EU operates the most centrally binding framework of the three. The Directive on open data and the re-use of public sector information requires member states to establish national policies for open access to publicly funded research data on an “open by default” basis, explicitly aligned with FAIR principles. For research funded under Horizon Europe, making data FAIR is a mandatory grant condition, not a recommendation: funded projects must produce a Data Management Plan and comply with FAIR requirements as a condition of the award, under the same “as open as possible, as closed as necessary” test used elsewhere.

    Infrastructure is built around the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC), described by the European Commission as a federated environment intended to become a “web of FAIR data and services” spanning all scientific disciplines. Within that federation, researchers commonly deposit through the general-purpose repository Zenodo — built and operated with CERN — while the Community Research and Development Information Service (CORDIS) serves as the EU’s public repository of record for funded project information.

    Where do the three approaches converge and diverge?

    All three jurisdictions treat FAIR as the technical baseline and all three qualify openness with a “necessary restriction” clause. The differences lie in enforcement mechanism, degree of centralisation, and whether a single flagship repository exists.

    Feature UK US EU
    Primary instrument UKRI Concordat on Open Research Data (evolving to a harmonised FAIR-explicit policy) OPEN Government Data Act; NIH DMS Policy; NSF Public Access Policy EU Open Data Directive; Horizon Europe grant conditions
    Legal basis Funder policy condition Federal statute plus agency policy Legally binding directive plus grant condition
    FAIR status Increasingly explicit in new UKRI policy Encouraged, embedded in agency plans Mandatory for Horizon Europe-funded projects
    Data management plan required Yes, for UKRI funding Yes, for NIH and NSF funding Yes, mandatory for Horizon Europe
    Repository model Centralised flagship (UK Data Service) plus disciplinary centres Federated (Data.gov, NSF-PAR, disciplinary repositories) Federated supranational (EOSC, Zenodo, CORDIS)

    Common questions on national data repository mandates

    What are the FAIR data principles required by UKRI?

    UKRI requires funded researchers to make outputs Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable, aligned with its Concordat on Open Research Data. UKRI councils frame this as maximising the impact, visibility and citation of research while applying the “as open as possible, as restricted as necessary” test to data with legitimate sensitivities.

    Does the NIH require a data management and sharing plan?

    Yes. Since 25 January 2023, the NIH Data Management and Sharing (DMS) Policy requires funded researchers to submit a DMS Plan describing how scientific data will be preserved and shared. NIH strongly encourages applying FAIR principles when selecting repositories and structuring metadata for that plan.

    Is FAIR data mandatory under Horizon Europe?

    Yes, unlike the UK’s evolving policy and the US’s encouraged-but-agency-specific approach, Horizon Europe makes FAIR data management a binding grant condition. Funded projects must submit a Data Management Plan and comply with FAIR requirements, subject to the same necessary-restriction exceptions used across all three jurisdictions.

    Is there one single national data repository researchers must use?

    No jurisdiction mandates a single universal repository. The UK combines a flagship service (UK Data Service) with disciplinary centres; the US runs a federated system across Data.gov and agency repositories such as NSF-PAR; the EU federates access through EOSC, Zenodo and CORDIS. Researchers typically choose the repository matching their discipline and funder requirements.

    What this means for institutions and researchers

    For research administrators managing multi-jurisdictional funding, a single data management plan template cannot satisfy all three regimes. Compliance teams must map deposit requirements per funder rather than assume FAIR-labelled data automatically meets every mandate’s specific repository, licensing and metadata conditions.

    The trend line points toward convergence. The UK’s move to a harmonised, more explicitly FAIR-aligned UKRI policy and the EU’s EOSC federation both signal a shift from fragmented rules toward unified infrastructure. The US remains the outlier: its federal open-data statute operates largely independently of agency-specific mandates from NIH and NSF.

    Institutions should treat “FAIR” and “open” as related but distinct compliance targets. A dataset can be fully FAIR — persistently identified, well-described, licensed — while remaining access-restricted for legitimate reasons in every jurisdiction covered here. Repository choice and data management plan content should be checked against the specific funder mandate, not a generic FAIR checklist.

  • cOAlition S Funding 2026: Diamond OA Shift

    cOAlition S funding has shifted decisively since 31 December 2024, when the funder consortium ended financial support for transformative agreements and transformative journals. Its 2026–2030 strategy, overseen by newly appointed Director Curt Rice and new Host Secretariat OPERAS, now channels funder money toward diamond open access publishing, repository infrastructure, and community-led scholarly communication rather than publisher-negotiated read-and-publish deals.

    cOAlition S is an international consortium of research funding and performing organisations — including UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), the European Commission, and the Wellcome Trust — that jointly implements Plan S, the 2018 commitment requiring immediate open access to publicly funded research.

    What Is cOAlition S and Why Does Its Funding Matter?

    cOAlition S was formed in September 2018 by a group of national and international research funders to accelerate the transition to full and immediate open access. Its members set grant conditions that publicly funded research must appear in compliant open-access journals, platforms, or repositories without embargo.

    Because member funders collectively control billions in annual research budgets, where cOAlition S chooses to direct compliance-related funding acts as a market signal for the entire scholarly publishing sector — publishers, repositories, and diamond OA platforms all reposition around it.

    Why Did cOAlition S Stop Funding Transformative Agreements?

    Transformative agreements — bundled contracts that shifted library subscription spending toward publisher open-access fees — were originally accepted by cOAlition S as a temporary bridge toward full open access. That bridge has now been formally withdrawn.

    From 31 December 2024, cOAlition S no longer financially supports transformative agreements or transformative journals. Funders instead direct their efforts to innovative, community-led open-access publishing initiatives such as the diamond model of OA, according to cOAlition S’s own implementation guidance, as reflected in university open-access policy guides including the University of Derby Library’s Plan S guidance.

    • Transformative agreements were judged to prolong hybrid open access rather than complete the transition to full OA.
    • cOAlition S’s 10 Principles, in effect since 2021, require CC BY licensing and repository-based immediate access as compliance routes that do not depend on publisher subscription bundles.
    • Funders retain rights-retention strategies and the Journal Checker Tool as the primary compliance mechanisms once transformative-agreement subsidy ends.

    Where Is cOAlition S Redirecting Its Funding in 2026?

    cOAlition S’s 2026–2030 strategy — adopted alongside the appointment of Curt Rice as Director and OPERAS as the coalition’s new Host Secretariat — reorients funder effort toward digital publishing infrastructure and community-owned models rather than publisher-negotiated deals.

    Two developments anchor this redirection. First, the Bengaluru Roadmap and Action Plan on Diamond Open Access, the outcome document of the 3rd Global Summit on Diamond Open Access held in Bengaluru, India, sets out coordinated funder and infrastructure commitments to diamond OA at global scale. Second, cOAlition S’s own Plan S Annual Review 2025 documents the consortium’s compliance monitoring and priority-action progress as it winds down transformative-agreement support.

    Funding mechanism cOAlition S status Effective date
    Transformative agreements / transformative journals Financial support ended 31 December 2024
    Diamond open access journals and platforms Priority investment area 2026–2030 strategy
    Institutional and subject repositories Core compliance route (immediate deposit, no embargo) Ongoing since 2021
    Rights retention / CC BY licensing Required compliance mechanism Ongoing since 2021

    What Role Do Diamond Open Access and Repositories Play?

    Diamond open access is a publishing model in which neither authors nor readers pay fees, with costs instead covered by funders, institutions, or consortia — distinguishing it from the article-processing-charge model that underpins most transformative agreements.

    Repositories remain the other pillar of cOAlition S’s redirected funding: Plan S has, since 2021, treated immediate deposit in open-access repositories as a fully compliant route in its own right, independent of any publisher agreement. As transformative-agreement subsidy disappears, funders are directing new investment toward the shared infrastructure — hosting, discovery, preservation — that diamond OA platforms and repositories both depend on.

    Answer-First Questions on cOAlition S Funding

    What is Plan S?

    Plan S is an open-access publishing mandate launched in September 2018 by cOAlition S, requiring that publications from publicly funded research be published immediately in compliant open-access journals, platforms, or repositories. It has applied to funded research outputs since 1 January 2021.

    Who are the cOAlition S funders?

    cOAlition S funders are an international consortium of national and supranational research funding and performing organisations, including UKRI, the European Commission, and the Wellcome Trust. Membership is open to funders willing to adopt the coalition’s ten Plan S principles and reporting requirements.

    What is diamond open access?

    Diamond open access is a scholarly publishing model where neither authors nor readers pay to publish or read, with operating costs met instead by funders, universities, or library consortia. cOAlition S now names diamond OA a priority destination for redirected funding.

    Why did cOAlition S stop funding transformative agreements?

    cOAlition S judged that transformative agreements risked entrenching hybrid open access rather than completing the shift to full OA. Support ended on 31 December 2024, with funding redirected to community-led, non-APC publishing models instead.

    What Does This Mean for Institutions and Publishers?

    Research offices and libraries that built compliance workflows around transformative-agreement read-and-publish deals now need parallel routes: repository deposit tracking, rights-retention templates, and diamond OA discovery for their researchers’ target venues.

    Publishers reliant on transformative-agreement revenue face a shrinking subsidy pool and should expect continued funder pressure toward CC BY licensing and embargo-free repository deposit as the default compliance path. Institutional research-administration teams should treat this as a funder-policy planning item, not a publishing-office footnote, when reviewing grant terms and reporting obligations. Understanding these shifts in context sits alongside broader research administration practice, and definitions of related terms are collected in the CASRAI research administration dictionary.

    Looking ahead, the 2026–2030 strategy signals that cOAlition S funding decisions will increasingly be judged on infrastructure outcomes — repository capacity, diamond OA sustainability, and equitable access — rather than publisher-agreement coverage, a shift research offices should build into multi-year OA budget planning now rather than after the next Plan S annual review.

  • cOAlition S Members in 2026: Which Funders Still Mandate Immediate Open Access

    cOAlition S is a coalition of 28 national research funders, charitable foundations, and international agencies that endorse Plan S, the requirement that publications from funded research be made openly accessible without embargo. Not every one of those coalition s members still enforces that requirement in the same way. Some, like UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) and Wellcome Trust, still apply the Rights Retention Strategy to force immediate access regardless of publisher policy. Others — most visibly the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation — have adopted 2024-era policies that no longer mandate an openly accessible accepted manuscript, and the coalition itself formally broadened its accepted routes to compliance under its 2026-2030 strategy, published 12 November 2025.

    cOAlition S is an informal alliance of research funders and research-performing organisations, launched in September 2018, that coordinates funding conditions requiring full and immediate open access to the peer-reviewed publications it supports. This article gives the current 2026 roster, distinguishes funders that still hold a full immediate-OA mandate from those that have relaxed enforcement, and explains what changed under the coalition’s newest strategic phase.

    Contents

    Who are the current cOAlition S members?

    cOAlition S began in 2018 with twelve founding organisations. According to the coalition’s own Strategy 2026-2030 document, that founding group “has developed into a robust network of 28 funders, encompassing agencies from Europe, North America, Jordan, Zambia, South Africa, and Australia.” The European Research Council (ERC) engaged at launch but formally withdrew support in July 2020.

    Founding and long-standing members include UKRI and Wellcome Trust (UK), the Austrian Science Fund (FWF), France’s Agence Nationale de la Recherche (ANR), the Dutch Research Council (NWO), the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF), Science Foundation Ireland, Luxembourg’s Fonds National de la Recherche (FNR), Poland’s National Science Centre (NCN), Portugal’s Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT), the Research Council of Norway, Australia’s National Health and Medical Research Council, the South African Medical Research Council, Jordan’s Higher Council for Science and Technology, Zambia’s National Science and Technology Council, and US philanthropic funders including the Gates Foundation, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, and Templeton World Charity Foundation.

    Which funders still hold a full immediate open-access mandate?

    A small group of cOAlition S members still enforces the original, strict version of Plan S: immediate open access with no embargo, secured through the Rights Retention Strategy, which requires grantees to apply a CC BY licence to the author accepted manuscript regardless of what the publisher’s own copyright policy says.

    • UKRI requires a CC BY-licensed accepted manuscript deposited with no embargo (or a compliant gold route), enforced through its funding assurance processes.
    • Wellcome Trust applies its own Rights Retention Statement, requiring immediate open access on acceptance.
    • National European funders such as FWF, ANR, NWO, and SNSF have kept their domestic OA policies aligned with the coalition’s founding principles.

    The coalition’s commissioned review, Galvanising the open access community: A study on the impact of Plan S (2024), credits the Rights Retention Strategy as the mechanism with the most “game-changing effect,” since institutions have since adopted it independently, beyond the original funder mandate.

    Which members have relaxed enforcement?

    The clearest case of a member funder relaxing its own mandate is the Gates Foundation. In 2024 it announced a “preprint-centric” open access policy and confirmed it would stop paying article processing charges (APCs). Per Wikipedia’s sourced summary of the change, this policy is “not entirely in line with cOAlition S,” because it no longer requires that an accepted manuscript itself be made openly accessible — it instead relies on preprint deposit, which is a materially weaker guarantee than the coalition’s founding immediate-OA principle.

    Two organisations exited or declined the coalition outright rather than relaxing in place:

    • Riksbankens Jubileumsfond (Sweden) was a member in 2018 but left in 2019 over concerns about Plan S’s implementation timeline.
    • India publicly declined to join cOAlition S in October 2019, despite earlier supportive signals from its Department of Biotechnology.
    • The European Research Council withdrew its formal backing in July 2020, even though the European Commission remains engaged with the coalition’s wider work.

    Separately, cOAlition S confirmed in 2024 that it would end financial support for “transformative agreements” altogether, removing 1,589 of 2,326 journals (68%) from its transformative journals scheme in 2023. That decision tightened one enforcement lever even as the coalition’s broader 2026-2030 strategy loosened others — illustrating that “enforcement” at cOAlition S is not moving in a single direction.

    Funder-by-funder status at a glance

    Funder 2026 status Basis
    UKRI (United Kingdom) Full mandate, active Rights Retention Strategy; no-embargo CC BY requirement
    Wellcome Trust (United Kingdom) Full mandate, active Own Rights Retention Statement
    FWF, ANR, NWO, SNSF (Austria, France, Netherlands, Switzerland) Full mandate, active Domestic OA policy aligned to founding principles
    Gates Foundation (United States) Relaxed in 2024 Preprint-centric policy; APCs no longer funded; accepted manuscript OA not required
    Riksbankens Jubileumsfond (Sweden) Departed 2019 Left over Plan S implementation timeline
    European Research Council Withdrew support, 2020 Formal withdrawal in July 2020
    India (Department of Biotechnology) Never joined Declined membership, October 2019

    What changed under the 2026-2030 strategy?

    cOAlition S published its Strategy 2026-2030 on 12 November 2025, organised around three priorities: strengthening the foundations for “full, immediate, sustainable, and equitable” open access; supporting shared digital infrastructure (including a joint position on AI training uses of CC BY content); and exploring financially sustainable publishing models.

    Chemistry World’s reporting on the strategy quotes Lidia Borrell-Damián, chair of the coalition’s executive steering group and secretary general of Science Europe, describing a shift toward embracing “a range of open access models” — including publish-review-curate (PRC), diamond open access, and preprints — rather than insisting on one route. Researcher commentary quoted in the same piece characterised this as the coalition “scaling back its ambitions” from the original single 2021 target of full immediate Gold/Green access. Per the International Association of Scientific, Technical & Medical Publishers (STM) OA Dashboard, cited in that coverage, the global share of articles published immediately open access (gold) rose from 14% in 2014 to 40% in 2024, while subscription-only publication fell from 70% to 54% over the same decade.

    The coalition also changed its own governance in this period. In December 2025 it issued a tender for a new host secretariat, backed by an annual budget of roughly €0.8 million, after the European Science Foundation’s hosting arrangement wound down. Curt Rice — previously rector of two Norwegian universities — was appointed cOAlition S’s new director in May 2026, with Operas confirmed as the new host secretariat managing the coalition’s funds and communications.

    What does this mean for institutions and researchers?

    Research administrators advising authors funded by a cOAlition S member should not assume uniform enforcement across the roster. UKRI- and Wellcome-funded authors still face a hard Rights Retention requirement with no embargo tolerance. Gates Foundation-funded authors now face a materially different, preprint-centric expectation. The coalition’s collective policy language has shifted from “full and immediate” as the only route toward a “multitude of routes to open access” — compliance officers should check each funder’s own published policy rather than treating the cOAlition S label as a proxy for one uniform rule.

    For research administration teams tracking funder compliance, and for anyone verifying open access terminology in the CASRAI dictionary, the practical takeaway is that “cOAlition S member” is now a looser designation of shared principle rather than a guarantee of identical mandate terms.

    Answer-first Q&A

    What is cOAlition S?

    cOAlition S is an alliance of national research funders, charitable foundations, and international agencies, launched in September 2018, that coordinates Plan S — the requirement that publications from the research they fund be made openly accessible without embargo, typically via the Rights Retention Strategy.

    How many funders are in cOAlition S in 2026?

    cOAlition S counts 28 member funders as of its 2026-2030 strategy, spanning Europe, North America, Jordan, Zambia, South Africa, and Australia, up from the twelve founding organisations that launched Plan S in 2018.

    Have any funders left cOAlition S?

    Yes. Riksbankens Jubileumsfond left in 2019 over Plan S’s timeline, India declined to join in 2019, and the European Research Council withdrew formal support in July 2020, though the European Commission remains engaged.

    Is Plan S still mandatory for cOAlition S members in 2026?

    Core members such as UKRI and Wellcome Trust still enforce immediate open access with no embargo, but the coalition’s 2026-2030 strategy formally recognises additional routes — preprints, diamond open access, and publish-review-curate models — alongside the original mandate, rather than treating “full and immediate” as the only compliant route.

    Looking ahead

    With Curt Rice now leading the coalition and Operas installed as host secretariat, cOAlition S enters 2026-2027 — the first phase of its new strategy — with a wider tent of acceptable open access routes than it had in 2018. The roster of 28 funders remains largely intact, but “cOAlition S member” increasingly describes a shared aspiration rather than one uniform compliance rule. Institutions should track each funder’s own published policy directly rather than inferring mandate strength from coalition membership alone.

  • Transformative Agreements End: Diamond OA Pivot Under cOAlition S 2026–2030 Strategy

    cOAlition S’s 2026–2030 strategy, published 12 November 2025, confirms that transformative agreements no longer sit at the centre of its open access policy: funders will not fund new transformative agreements by default (a position effective since 2025), and the coalition is redirecting policy attention and infrastructure investment toward diamond open access, preprints, and publish-review-curate models. For library consortia and research offices still budgeting around read-and-publish renewals, this is the point at which planning assumptions need to change.

    A transformative agreement is a contract negotiated between a library, national consortium, or regional grouping and a publisher that repurposes former subscription spending into payment for open access publishing services, intended as a temporary bridge from subscription access to a fully open access system rather than a permanent settlement.

    What Changed in cOAlition S’s 2026–2030 Strategy

    cOAlition S confirmed the end of its financial support for open access publishing under transformative arrangements after 31 December 2024, a position it first announced on 26 January 2023 and formalised in the Plan S Implementation Guidance. From 2025, participating funders stopped treating a transformative agreement as automatically compliant with Plan S; authors must instead demonstrate compliance through full open access publication, an independently negotiated agreement meeting transparency criteria, or rights retention.

    The coalition’s Strategy 2026–2030, released 12 November 2025, builds on that withdrawal rather than reversing it. The document sets three strategic priorities: strengthening the foundations of full, immediate, sustainable, and equitable open access (including a review of the Plan S principles to give explicit weight to publish-review-curate models, diamond open access, and preprints); supporting the digital infrastructures that make open access sustainable; and exploring financially sustainable, equitable publishing systems with formal monitoring of policy impact.

    Implementation runs in two phases: an initial two-year period from 2026 to 2027, followed by 2028–2030, with second-phase priorities to be set by the coalition’s Leaders Group based on what the first phase delivers. The coalition itself has grown considerably during this period, from 12 founding organisations at Plan S’s 2018 launch to 28 funders spanning Europe, North America, Jordan, Zambia, South Africa, and Australia.

    Why cOAlition S Is Moving Away From Transformative Agreements

    cOAlition S’s own reasoning is explicit: continuing to fund transformative arrangements indefinitely risked making them permanent, which the coalition has stated would perpetuate the hybrid open access model it has consistently opposed. Individual funders retain discretion to keep supporting transformative agreements as part of national strategies, and any such exceptions are published on the cOAlition S website, but this is now framed as an exception rather than the default route.

    Independent data on open access growth supports the coalition’s case that the market has moved on from where it stood when transformative agreements were designed. According to the International Association of Scientific, Technical & Medical Publishers (STM), the share of articles, reviews, and conference papers published immediately as gold open access rose from 14% in 2014 to 40% in 2024, while the subscription-only share fell from 70% to 54% over the same decade. Gold open access, funded through article processing charges, is now the dominant open route — which is precisely the outcome the coalition says has intensified concerns about cost and equity, and pushed diamond open access up its agenda.

    Lidia Borrell-Damián, chair of the cOAlition S executive steering group and Secretary General of Science Europe, has summarised the shift directly: “We are trying to shift the market towards more diverse, sustainable approaches.” Not every commentator reads the pivot the same way. Richard Sever, assistant director of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press and a co-founder of the preprint server bioRxiv, has argued that Plan S has gone from being “fairly specific” — originally focused on flipping subscription journals through transformative agreements — to “rather vague,” now spanning preprints, alternative peer review, and diamond open access simultaneously.

    Open access route Who typically pays cOAlition S funder support, 2026–2030
    Transformative agreement (read & publish) Library or consortium, bundled with subscription Not funded as a default compliance route since 2025; national exceptions only
    Gold open access (APC) Author, institution, or funder, per article Recognised route; cost and equity impacts now formally monitored
    Rights retention (green OA + CC BY manuscript) No publishing fee; repository deposit Default compliance mechanism where no other route applies
    Diamond/platinum open access Universities, societies, funders, consortia infrastructure Named strategic priority; principles review and infrastructure investment
    Publish-review-curate (PRC) / preprints Funder or community infrastructure Included in the 2026–2027 principles review

    What Library Consortia and Research Offices Need to Renegotiate

    Consortia that built multi-year budgets around transformative agreement renewals now need to treat those renewals as contestable rather than routine. The practical work falls into a small number of categories.

    • Audit existing transformative agreements against cOAlition S’s current compliance rules, and flag which corresponding authors and grants are affected by the loss of default recognition.
    • Reopen consortium-level negotiations with publishers whose transformative agreements are approaching renewal, testing whether an independently negotiated, transparent read-and-publish deal or a conversion to full open access better serves the portfolio.
    • Reallocate a share of subscription and APC budgets toward diamond open access infrastructure — journal platforms, society publishing services, and consortium-run funds — in line with cOAlition S’s stated 2026–2027 priority of supporting digital publishing infrastructure.
    • Strengthen rights retention workflows so that manuscript deposit with a CC BY licence happens at submission, since this remains the fallback compliance route wherever a transformative agreement no longer applies.
    • Track the ESAC Initiative’s transformative agreement registry and national consortium reporting to benchmark negotiating positions against comparable institutions rather than negotiating in isolation.

    Institutions with mature identifier and metadata infrastructure — ORCID, DataCite, and CrossRef records consistently linked to funder awards — are better placed to demonstrate compliance under this more fragmented set of routes than institutions still relying on a publisher-reported transformative agreement dashboard.

    Answer-First Q&A: Transformative Agreements and Diamond Open Access

    What is a transformative agreement?

    A transformative agreement is an umbrella term, defined by the ESAC Initiative, for contracts negotiated between institutions and publishers that repurpose former subscription expenditure to remunerate publishers for open access publishing services, gradually shifting the underlying business model from toll access toward open access.

    What is a transformative journal?

    A transformative journal is a subscription or hybrid journal that commits to a defined trajectory toward full open access, including a rising share of open access content and offsetting subscription income against publishing fees. cOAlition S also withdrew financial recognition of this route after 2024.

    What is diamond open access?

    Diamond (or platinum) open access describes journals and platforms that charge no fee to either authors or readers, with publishing costs instead covered by universities, scholarly societies, funders, or library consortia. It is a named strategic priority in cOAlition S’s 2026–2030 strategy.

    Is a transformative agreement still Plan S compliant?

    A transformative agreement can still satisfy Plan S if it is published on an individual funder’s list of recognised exceptions for national strategies; otherwise, cOAlition S no longer treats it as automatically compliant, and authors must use full open access, an approved independent agreement, or rights retention instead.

    Implications and What Comes Next

    The near-term implication is budgetary and administrative: consortia negotiating transformative agreement renewals in 2026 and 2027 should expect publishers to resist unwinding these deals, since they remain commercially attractive, even as funder recognition narrows. The medium-term implication is structural: cOAlition S’s own strategy explicitly ties future funding priorities to diamond open access and shared infrastructure, meaning consortium budgets that continue flowing entirely through subscription-linked read-and-publish deals will increasingly diverge from where funder policy is heading.

    The second phase of the strategy, from 2028 to 2030, is not yet fixed; cOAlition S’s Leaders Group will set those priorities based on what the 2026–2027 principles review and infrastructure investments actually deliver. Institutions that use the next two years to build diamond open access contributions, tighten rights-retention deposit workflows, and maintain clean, linked identifier metadata will be negotiating from a position of readiness rather than catching up once the second phase is confirmed.

    See the CASRAI Dictionary for definitions of related open access and compliance terms, and the CASRAI research administration hub for broader compliance and infrastructure guidance.

  • AI Research, Innovation, and Accountability Act: What Research Offices Need to Know

    The AI Research, Innovation, and Accountability Act (AIRIA, S.3312) was a bipartisan US Senate bill that would have created federal risk tiers, transparency reporting, and certification duties for high-impact AI systems. It cleared the Senate Commerce Committee in July 2024 but died when the 118th Congress adjourned in January 2025. Its framework has not disappeared, however: near-identical risk-tier and disclosure ideas now surface in state AI statutes, in federal agency guidance, and in follow-on bills before the 119th Congress — several of which already touch how NIH and NSF handle AI in grant review.

    AIRIA is a defined legislative proposal, not a law currently in force: it is the bill that proposed classifying AI systems as “high-impact” or “critical-impact” and tasking the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) with testing, evaluation, validation, and verification standards for the highest-risk category.

    What is the AI Research, Innovation, and Accountability Act?

    The AI Research, Innovation, and Accountability Act is a US Senate bill introduced on 15 November 2023 by Senators John Thune (R-SD), Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), Roger Wicker (R-MS), John Hickenlooper (D-CO), Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV), and Ben Ray Luján (D-NM). It proposed a risk-based federal framework rather than blanket rules for all AI.

    Core provisions included:

    • A two-tier risk classification for “high-impact” and “critical-impact” AI systems used in consequential decisions.
    • Mandatory transparency reports and risk assessments from developers and deployers of the highest-risk systems.
    • A NIST-led programme to develop testing, evaluation, validation, and verification (TEVV) standards.
    • A certification and enforcement structure housed at the Department of Commerce.
    • A consumer-education and industry working-group mandate to support voluntary compliance ahead of formal rules.

    Unlike the EU’s comprehensive AI Act, AIRIA targeted only the highest-risk use cases and left most research and low-risk commercial AI activity outside its scope.

    What happened to AIRIA in Congress?

    AIRIA advanced further than most AI bills of its era but still did not become law. The Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation ordered it reported on 31 July 2024, and the Congressional Budget Office published a cost estimate on 6 December 2024. Under standard congressional procedure, any bill not enacted before a Congress ends is considered dead; AIRIA lapsed with the close of the 118th Congress on 3 January 2025 and was not carried forward automatically.

    That is not the end of the story. Several bills before the 119th Congress (2025–2026) reuse AIRIA’s building blocks — including the AI Accountability Act (H.R.1694), which directs a federal study of AI accountability measures, and the Future of Artificial Intelligence Innovation Act of 2026 (S.3952), which revives the NIST standards-and-evaluation mandate AIRIA proposed. None of these has replicated AIRIA in full, but the pattern is consistent: risk tiers, NIST-run testing standards, and disclosure duties keep reappearing in federal drafting, which is why the original bill remains a useful reference text even though it never passed.

    How does AIRIA interact with NIH and NSF grant compliance?

    AIRIA itself never reached the funding agencies, but the compliance gap it targeted — undisclosed or unaccountable AI use in high-stakes review processes — is already being filled through agency policy rather than statute. Research offices do not need AIRIA to pass to feel its logic in practice.

    • NIH issued NOT-OD-23-149, prohibiting NIH scientific peer reviewers from uploading grant application or critique content into generative AI tools, to protect peer-review confidentiality and integrity.
    • NSF issued a parallel notice on 14 December 2023 barring reviewers from entering proposal or review information into non-approved generative AI tools, with corresponding updates folded into the Proposal & Award Policies and Procedures Guide (PAPPG).
    • OMB Memorandum M-24-10, issued 28 March 2024, requires every CFO Act agency — including the parent departments of NIH and NSF — to designate a Chief AI Officer, convene an AI governance board, inventory AI use cases annually, and publish compliance plans.

    Research administrators should read AIRIA less as a future obligation and more as the missing statutory layer above rules that funders have already implemented administratively. If AIRIA-style provisions are eventually enacted, they would most plausibly formalise — not replace — the NIH and NSF confidentiality prohibitions and the OMB governance-board model that are already operating today.

    How does AIRIA compare with state AI laws and the EU AI Act?

    Research institutions rarely operate under one AI framework. Multi-state university systems, international co-investigators, and federally funded projects with EU partners are simultaneously exposed to federal inaction, an unsettled state landscape, and a phased EU regime.

    Framework Jurisdiction Status as of July 2026 Relevance to research offices
    AIRIA (S.3312) US federal (Senate) Died with the 118th Congress, 3 Jan 2025; ideas recur in newer bills Reference model for future federal risk-tier and disclosure rules
    OMB M-24-10 US federal (executive) In effect since 28 Mar 2024 Directly governs how NIH, NSF, and other agencies use AI internally
    NIH / NSF AI notices US federal agency policy In effect since Jun–Dec 2023 Bars generative AI use in peer review of grant applications
    Colorado AI Act (SB 24-205) US state Repealed by SB 26-189 (14 May 2026); never took effect Cautionary example — comprehensive state AI law can collapse before compliance deadlines
    Texas TRAIGA US state In effect 1 Jan 2026 Intent-based liability model; applies to any AI system touching Texas residents
    EU AI Act European Union Phased in Aug 2024–Aug 2026 Relevant to Horizon Europe co-investigators and EU-based research partners

    The Colorado reversal is the clearest recent signal: SB 24-205 was the first comprehensive US state AI law, but Colorado Governor Jared Polis signed its full replacement, SB 26-189, on 14 May 2026 — meaning the original statute never actually took effect. State AI law is moving fast and is not stable enough to treat any single statute as a durable compliance target.

    Common questions research administrators ask

    What is the AI Research, Innovation, and Accountability Act?

    It is a 2023 US Senate bill (S.3312) that proposed risk-tiered federal oversight of “high-impact” and “critical-impact” AI systems, including NIST-led testing standards and mandatory transparency reporting. It advanced through Senate Commerce Committee review in 2024 but was never enacted.

    What is the AI legislation situation in 2026?

    No single comprehensive federal AI statute exists in the United States as of mid-2026. Oversight instead comes from a patchwork of agency guidance (OMB M-24-10, NIH and NSF notices), a shifting set of state statutes (Texas TRAIGA in effect, Colorado’s law repealed and replaced), and several competing federal bills still in committee.

    What are the seven principles referenced in AI regulatory frameworks?

    Frameworks such as the EU AI Act commonly cite human agency and oversight, technical robustness and safety, privacy and data governance, transparency, non-discrimination and fairness, societal and environmental wellbeing, and accountability. AIRIA did not adopt this exact list but pursued the same accountability and transparency goals through US-specific risk tiers.

    Why research offices should track this now

    Waiting for a federal AI bill to pass before building internal AI-use policy is the wrong sequencing. NIH and NSF already enforce confidentiality rules on generative AI in peer review, OMB already requires agency AI governance boards, and state rules are changing faster than any single institution can absorb reactively — Colorado’s reversal took less than two years from enactment to repeal.

    Research offices should treat AIRIA as a design template, not a deadline. Institutions that map their existing AI-use disclosure practices against AIRIA’s risk-tier and TEVV concepts now will be positioned to adapt quickly if a successor bill — whether H.R.1694, S.3952, or a future proposal — advances further than AIRIA did. The direction of travel across federal agency guidance, state law, and the EU AI Act is consistent even where the US federal statute itself has stalled: more disclosure, more documented risk assessment, and more named institutional accountability for AI used in decisions that affect people’s funding, careers, and research records.

    For related compliance context, see CASRAI’s research administration resources and the CASRAI Dictionary for definitions of adjacent governance and compliance terms.

  • State AI Laws Create a Patchwork for Consortia

    State AI laws are the individual statutes and regulations that US states — rather than the US Congress — have enacted to govern the development, deployment and disclosure of artificial intelligence, and by mid-2026 more than 45 states have introduced such legislation with no unifying federal framework in place. For research consortia and shared-service research offices that span multiple states, this means the same AI-assisted grant-writing tool, chatbot, or automated screening system can be lawful in one member campus’s state and restricted or unlawful in another’s.

    A state AI law is a statute enacted by an individual US state legislature — as distinct from federal legislation — that regulates how artificial intelligence systems are developed, deployed, disclosed, or audited within that state’s jurisdiction.

    What Are State AI Laws, and How Many States Have Passed Them?

    State AI laws cover a wide range of obligations: algorithmic-discrimination audits, generative-AI content disclosure, “high-risk” system impact assessments, and rules on AI use in employment and consumer decisions. According to the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL), in the 2025 legislative session all 50 states, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, and Washington, DC introduced AI-related legislation — a volume that state legislative trackers report continued to accelerate into 2026, with well over a thousand AI-related bills introduced nationwide.

    No two states have adopted the same definitions, thresholds, or enforcement mechanisms. A tool classified as “high-risk automated decision-making” in one state’s statute may fall entirely outside another state’s scope, or be captured under a different label altogether.

    How Do California, Colorado, and Texas AI Laws Compare?

    Three states illustrate how far the approaches diverge. California took effect on 1 January 2026 with two distinct statutes: the Transparency in Frontier AI Act (SB 53), which imposes safety and transparency reporting duties on developers of large-scale frontier models, and the AI Transparency Act (SB 942), which requires disclosure when content is AI-generated. Colorado enacted the first comprehensive state AI statute, the Colorado AI Act (SB 24-205), which took effect in June 2026 and requires developers and deployers of high-risk AI systems to complete impact assessments and provide consumer disclosures; a subsequent amendment, SB 26-189, narrowed that scope to automated decision-making technology, with a revised effective date of 1 January 2027. Texas, by contrast, passed the Texas Responsible AI Governance Act (TRAIGA), which favours an industry self-governance framework over Colorado’s impact-assessment model.

    Jurisdiction Key statute Core mechanism Effective date
    California SB 53 (Transparency in Frontier AI Act); SB 942 (AI Transparency Act) Frontier-model safety reporting; AI-generated content disclosure 1 January 2026
    Colorado Colorado AI Act (SB 24-205), amended by SB 26-189 Impact assessments for automated decision-making technology 1 January 2027 (as amended)
    Texas Texas Responsible AI Governance Act (TRAIGA) Industry self-governance framework Enacted 2025
    Federal Executive Order, “Ensuring a National Policy Framework for Artificial Intelligence” Directs agencies to identify and challenge state AI laws seen as burdensome 11 December 2025 (signed)

    Is the Federal Government Trying to Preempt State AI Laws?

    Yes — but not yet through legislation that has passed Congress. On 11 December 2025, the White House signed an executive order, “Ensuring a National Policy Framework for Artificial Intelligence,” directing federal agencies to identify state AI laws that require models to alter their truthful outputs or that otherwise obstruct a national AI policy. The order instructs agencies to evaluate funding and litigation levers against such state statutes, but an executive order cannot itself repeal state law: only Congress or the courts can do that, and no comprehensive federal AI statute analogous to the EU AI Act has been enacted.

    Until preemption legislation clears Congress — proposals exist but none has passed as of mid-2026 — state AI laws remain, in the words of one large law firm’s 2026 tracker, “the primary source of compliance obligations” for organisations operating in the United States.

    Why Is the Patchwork a Problem for Multi-Campus Research Consortia?

    Multi-state research consortia, shared-service research offices, and multi-site funded studies do not choose a single home jurisdiction the way a single-campus institution does. A consortium spanning California, Colorado, Texas, and a fourth state must reconcile at least three incompatible disclosure and assessment regimes simultaneously — and update that reconciliation as amendments such as Colorado’s SB 26-189 shift scope and effective dates mid-cycle.

    This creates specific friction points for research administration:

    • AI-assisted grant writing and proposal development may trigger content-disclosure duties in California but not in a partner state, complicating a single consortium-wide authorship and disclosure policy.
    • Automated screening or scoring tools used in participant recruitment, peer review triage, or research-integrity checks can qualify as “high-risk automated decision-making” in Colorado while sitting outside any equivalent category in Texas.
    • Shared IT and data infrastructure hosted in one state does not exempt a consortium from a partner campus’s home-state obligations when researchers in that state are end users of the system.
    • Vendor contracts for AI writing, transcription, or analysis tools need jurisdiction-by-jurisdiction compliance riders rather than a single boilerplate clause.

    Research offices increasingly need to disclose AI involvement in scholarly outputs regardless of state law, aligning with journal and funder expectations. Where AI tools contribute to drafting, structured contributor role taxonomies used in authorship disclosure — the model CASRAI originated in 2014 and which NISO now stewards as ANSI/NISO Z39.104-2022 — offer one consistent way to record human-versus-tool contribution that sits independently of any single state’s transparency statute.

    Answer-First Q&A

    How many US states have introduced AI legislation in 2026?

    By the 2025 legislative session, all 50 states, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, and Washington, DC had introduced AI-related legislation, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. State legislative trackers report the volume of AI-related bills continued to climb through early 2026, spanning dozens of states with no sign of consolidation.

    Does the federal executive order override state AI laws?

    No. The December 2025 executive order directs federal agencies to identify and challenge state AI laws it views as obstructive, but an executive order cannot repeal state statute. Only an act of Congress or a binding court ruling can preempt state AI law, and no such federal AI statute has been enacted as of mid-2026.

    What is the Colorado AI Act’s current status?

    The original Colorado AI Act (SB 24-205) required impact assessments for high-risk AI systems. It was subsequently narrowed by SB 26-189 to focus specifically on automated decision-making technology, with a revised effective date of 1 January 2027, replacing the earlier June 2026 start date.

    What should a multi-state research consortium put in its AI-use policy?

    A consortium policy should map every member campus’s home-state AI statute, flag tools that trigger disclosure or impact-assessment duties in any one jurisdiction, and apply the strictest applicable standard consortium-wide rather than negotiating exceptions state by state.

    Implications for Shared-Service Research Offices

    Shared-service research offices — the units that run grants administration, research integrity, and compliance for several campuses at once — cannot rely on a single state’s AI statute as their reference point. The practical implication is that AI-use policy for a multi-campus consortium must be built to the strictest state standard among its members, then adjusted downward only where a specific campus’s home-state law is demonstrably more permissive and the consortium is willing to operate two policy tiers. Bodies such as NCURA and EARMA increasingly field member questions on exactly this cross-jurisdictional friction, reflecting how quickly the patchwork has become an operational, not just a legal, concern.

    Consortium agreements and vendor contracts should each name which state-law regime governs AI tool use for that workflow, rather than assuming the lead institution’s state law applies uniformly to every partner.

    Outlook

    Absent a federal AI statute, the state-by-state pattern set by California, Colorado, and Texas is likely to keep expanding rather than converging in the near term. Consortia that govern to the strictest applicable state standard, and document AI contribution through structured, framework-neutral disclosure practices, will adapt faster as more states legislate and as amendments such as SB 26-189 continue to shift effective dates and scope. Treat this as a standing monitoring task, not a one-time policy update — state statutes are already being amended within their first year in force.