The REF 2029 open access policy requires journal articles and conference proceedings with an ISSN, published from 1 January 2026 to 31 December 2028, to be deposited within three months of publication, made available after an embargo of no more than six months (Main Panels A and B) or twelve months (Main Panels C and D), and shared under a licence that is at minimum CC BY-NC-ND, with CC BY strongly preferred. Monographs and other long-form outputs remain outside its scope.
The REF 2029 open access policy is the funding bodies’ mandatory framework, set out by the four UK higher education funding bodies for the Research Excellence Framework, governing how eligible journal articles and conference outputs must be deposited, embargoed and licensed to count toward a university’s REF 2029 submission.
- What does the REF 2029 open access policy cover?
- What is the deposit window for REF 2029 outputs?
- What are the REF 2029 embargo caps by panel?
- What licence does REF 2029 require?
- Why are monographs excluded from REF 2029 open access rules?
- Frequently asked questions
- What this means for research administrators
- Outlook: the run-up to 2029
What does the REF 2029 open access policy cover?
The policy applies only to journal articles and conference contributions carrying an International Standard Serial Number (ISSN), published between 1 January 2021 and 31 December 2028. Outputs published before 1 January 2026 remain subject to the legacy REF 2021 requirements, while everything published from 1 January 2026 onward must meet the revised, tighter rules.
Two publication windows therefore run in parallel for REF 2029 purposes:
- 1 January 2021 – 31 December 2025: REF 2021-era requirements apply (deposit within three months of acceptance; 12/24-month embargo caps).
- 1 January 2026 – 31 December 2028: revised REF 2029 requirements apply (deposit within three months of publication; 6/12-month embargo caps; open-licence preference).
Datasets, code, protocols, artistic outputs and preprints without an ISSN fall outside the policy entirely, though the funding bodies encourage — but do not require — making them open where practical.
What is the deposit window for REF 2029 outputs?
For outputs published from 1 January 2026, the author’s accepted manuscript (AAM) — or, where the publication agreement permits, the version of record — must be deposited in an institutional repository, a shared repository service, a subject repository, or a compliant preprint server within three months of the date of publication, not the date of acceptance as under REF 2021.
This is a meaningful procedural shift: under the REF 2029 guidance hub’s Section 5 policy, the trigger date moves later in the workflow, which library teams need to build into repository-ingest reminders rather than acceptance-stage checklists alone. Institutions that already deposit on acceptance can keep doing so “at no detriment” — the three-month-post-publication rule is a floor, not a ceiling.
What are the REF 2029 embargo caps by panel?
For outputs published from 1 January 2026, permitted embargo periods are halved relative to REF 2021: Main Panels A and B (medicine, health, life sciences, physical sciences, engineering, mathematics) fall to a maximum six-month embargo, and Main Panels C and D (social sciences, arts and humanities) fall to a maximum twelve-month embargo. Interdisciplinary outputs spanning A/B and C/D boundaries may use the longer of the two applicable caps.
| Requirement | Outputs published 2021–2025 (REF 2021 rules) | Outputs published 2026–2028 (REF 2029 rules) |
|---|---|---|
| Deposit trigger | Within 3 months of acceptance | Within 3 months of publication |
| Embargo cap, Panels A & B | 12 months | 6 months |
| Embargo cap, Panels C & D | 24 months | 12 months |
| Licence floor | CC BY-NC-ND or equivalent | CC BY-NC-ND or equivalent (CC BY preferred) |
| Non-compliance tolerance | 5% of in-scope outputs, or 1 output, whichever is higher | Same 5%/1-output tolerance carried forward |
Outputs still under a compliant embargo at the REF submission deadline are treated as policy-compliant, provided the embargo length itself sits within the applicable cap.
What licence does REF 2029 require?
The funding bodies do not mandate a single licence but state a strong preference for CC BY “or other licence formats meeting this standard of openness.” CC BY-NC, CC BY-ND and CC BY-NC-ND remain acceptable for outputs published between 1 January 2026 and 31 December 2028, provided the AAM deposit route otherwise meets deposit, discovery and access requirements.
That flexibility is time-limited. Under the same guidance, from 1 January 2029, all future in-scope outputs must fully meet the open-licensing standard (effectively CC BY or equivalent), regardless of whether the output is published gold/diamond or shared via green deposit — subject only to the standard policy exceptions. Research offices planning publication strategy now should treat 2026–2028 as a transition window, not a permanent settlement.
Why are monographs excluded from REF 2029 open access rules?
REF 2029 carries no open access requirement for long-form outputs — monographs, book chapters and scholarly editions — because the funding bodies judged the monograph publishing ecosystem (specialist university presses, third-party image rights, translation licensing) not yet ready for a mandatory equivalent to the journal-article regime. The REF 2029 Open Access Policy and Consultation summary, published 11 December 2024, confirms that any long-form open access mandate is deferred to the assessment cycle after REF 2029, with implementation “no earlier than 1 January 2029.” Datasets, code and artistic research outputs are similarly welcomed but not mandated.
Frequently asked questions
What outputs are eligible for REF 2029 open access requirements?
Only journal articles and conference contributions with an ISSN, published between 1 January 2021 and 31 December 2028, are in scope. Preprints without an ISSN, monographs, book chapters, datasets, code and artistic outputs fall outside the policy, though open sharing of the latter is encouraged rather than mandatory.
What are the key changes for REF 2029 open access policy?
The three headline changes from REF 2021 are a later deposit trigger (publication, not acceptance), shorter embargo caps (6/12 months instead of 12/24), and a stated preference for CC BY licensing during 2026–2028, tightening to a full open-licence requirement from 2029 onward.
What is an open access policy in the REF context?
An open access policy in this context is a funder-mandated condition of eligibility: outputs must be deposited, discoverable and free to read and download for anyone with internet access before they can count in a unit’s REF submission, independent of any journal paywall.
How can institutions check whether an output meets REF open access requirements?
Institutions cross-reference the deposit date, publication date, embargo length and licence recorded in their repository or current research information system (CRIS) against the applicable policy window, then apply the REF 2029 audit’s risk-based sampling approach — modelled on REF 2021, where ten institutions faced second-stage audit and four required data adjustments.
What this means for research administrators
Repository workflows built around REF 2021’s acceptance-date trigger need re-sequencing for the publication-date trigger from 1 January 2026, and embargo-tracking systems must be updated to the new 6/12-month caps to avoid outputs drifting into the 5%-tolerance band unintentionally. Because the REF 2021 audit found four institutions required data adjustments out of ten sampled at the second stage, and one required an output removed after substantive sampling, administrators should expect comparable scrutiny under REF 2029’s “broadly mirrored” risk-based audit approach, as set out in the REF 2029 guidance hub.
The policy aligns deliberately with UKRI’s Open Access Policy for journal articles and conference proceedings, in force since 1 April 2022, and with the wider push for openness associated with cOAlition S — meaning institutions already compliant with UKRI grant conditions have much of the REF 2029 groundwork in place. For research administrators tracking related contributor and provenance standards, see CASRAI’s research administration resources and the open research dictionary for definitions of terms such as author accepted manuscript and green/gold open access.
Outlook: the run-up to 2029
Guidance for REF 2029 is not yet fully finalised: the guidance hub itself notes that modules “will be formally finalised in 2026” and may see small revisions before then, with the last substantive change to Section 5 recorded on 13 June 2025. Institutions should treat the current 6/12-month embargo caps and CC BY-NC-ND licence floor as the operative rules for 2026–2028 outputs while watching for the 2029 tightening to full open-licensing standards and the separate monograph mandate expected for the cycle beyond REF 2029.