CASRAI Dictionary

Tag: ref 2029 output eligibility

  • REF 2029 Output Eligibility: OA Exceptions

    REF 2029 output eligibility does not require every journal article or conference paper to be immediately open access. The policy allows four exception categories — deposit, access, technical, and a catch-all “other” route covering staff circumstances, third-party rights and technical infeasibility — each keeping an otherwise non-compliant output eligible, provided the exception is identified, evidenced and stays within a unit’s five per cent non-compliance tolerance.

    The REF 2029 open access policy is the UK funding bodies’ requirement that in-scope journal articles and conference proceedings, published between 1 January 2021 and 31 December 2028, be deposited, discoverable and freely accessible to be eligible for the Research Excellence Framework 2029, subject to defined exceptions.

    Durham University’s Library Research Support service publishes a working exceptions log — updated as recently as 1 July 2026 — that maps each permitted exception to the evidence a research office should hold, offering a practical template for institutions building their own REF 2029 compliance file.

    Contents

    What counts as an REF 2029 output eligibility exception?

    An REF 2029 output eligibility exception is a recognised circumstance under which an in-scope journal article or conference contribution is exempt from some or all open access criteria while remaining eligible for submission. The REF 2029 open access policy, last updated 13 June 2025, groups these into deposit, access and technical exceptions plus a further “other” exception for circumstances beyond an institution’s control.

    Applying an exception correctly means the output is treated as no-detriment and does not count against a unit’s compliance tolerance. Misapplying one, or failing to evidence it, risks the output being reclassified as unclassified during audit.

    Two separate exception frameworks apply depending on when the output was first published:

    • Outputs published 1 January 2021 to 31 December 2025 follow the carried-forward REF 2021 exception categories, with one additional exception added for REF 2029.
    • Outputs published from 1 January 2026 follow a revised, consolidated exceptions framework of four categories, alongside tighter embargo maxima (six months for Main Panels A and B, twelve months for Main Panels C and D, down from twelve and twenty-four months respectively).

    Individual staff circumstances: who qualifies for an exception?

    Staff-circumstance exceptions cover authors whose personal, employment or contractual situation made compliance genuinely impossible. Under the “other” exception, this includes extenuating personal circumstances such as extended leave, industrial action, institutional closure days, and software problems not already covered by the technical category.

    A related technical exception applies where an output has a substantive connection to the submitting institution but was published after the author’s employment ended, and compliance could not be determined. A further exception, introduced for REF 2029, exempts outputs authored entirely by staff ineligible for the volume measure, since they had no expectation of needing compliance.

    One risk is flagged explicitly: institutions relying heavily on the “other” category are more likely to attract a higher audit risk score, though deposit, access or technical exceptions do not themselves raise risk. A researcher on long-term sick leave whose manuscript could not be deposited within the three-month window would typically be recorded under “other”, with leave dates and repository correspondence kept as evidence — the record Durham’s log recommends holding before, not after, submission.

    Third-party rights and technical infeasibility: the other routes

    Third-party rights exceptions apply where an output reproduces content — images, data extracts, previously published material — for which open licences could not be obtained at reasonable cost or within the required timescale. Here, deposit and discovery requirements still apply; only access and/or licensing conditions are waived.

    Technical infeasibility exceptions cover cases where the failure sits with infrastructure rather than the author: a repository’s short-term technical failure (excluding systemic issues), or an external service provider failure, such as a subject repository that did not lift an embargo on schedule or ceased operating altogether.

    Exception category What it exempts Typical qualifying scenario
    Deposit All open access criteria (deposit, discovery, access, licensing) Unlawful to deposit; publisher disallows repository deposit; delay securing final peer-reviewed text
    Access Access, embargo and/or licensing only — deposit and discovery still required Embargo exceeds policy maxima; third-party content licensing unavailable
    Technical All open access criteria Repository or external service provider failure; employment ended before publication
    Other All open access criteria Personal circumstances, industrial action, closure days, unlisted software issues

    Durham’s exceptions log as a working model

    Durham University’s Library Research Support service maintains a dedicated REF 2029 Open Access Exceptions guide, structured as four tabs: deposit, access, and technical/other exceptions for outputs published to 31 December 2025, plus a consolidated four-category framework for outputs from 1 January 2026. Each tab pairs the qualifying scenarios with how the exception is expected to be evidenced during any future audit.

    Two features make it a useful model: it separates outputs by publication date, since qualifying criteria and embargo maxima genuinely differ either side of 1 January 2026; and it is candid about what remains unresolved. As of its 1 July 2026 update, Durham states that “the internal process for applying exceptions is yet to be confirmed,” directing queries to its repository administration team meanwhile — a reminder that internal workflows keep evolving well after the REF policy text has stabilised.

    Documenting exceptions for audit: what research offices must keep

    REF 2029 audit will broadly mirror the risk-based approach used for REF 2021, per the funding bodies’ guidance, while final procedures remain under development. In REF 2021, ten institutions’ submissions were selected for second-stage audit on a risk basis, producing four data adjustments; three were separately selected for substantive sampling; one had to adjust its submission by a single output. For REF 2029, evidence may be required at individual-output level, including written justification for any use of the “other” category.

    A minimum evidence file for each exception should include:

    1. The exception category claimed and the REF 2029 guidance paragraph it falls under.
    2. Dates of acceptance, publication and deposit, plus any embargo end date.
    3. Correspondence documenting the barrier — a publisher refusal, or confirmation of a service outage.
    4. A short narrative justification, particularly for “most appropriate publication” or “other” claims.
    5. Confirmation the output falls within the unit’s five per cent, or one-output, tolerance.

    Institutions should also monitor exception mix over time: a submission weighted heavily toward “other”, rather than deposit, access or technical exceptions, is more likely to draw a higher audit risk score, even where every claim is legitimate.

    Answer-first Q&A

    What is the publication period for REF 2029?

    The output types in scope of the REF 2029 open access policy are journal articles and conference contributions with an International Standard Serial Number, first published between 1 January 2021 and 31 December 2028. Outputs published from 1 January 2026 follow revised deposit, embargo and licensing requirements, while earlier outputs follow REF 2021-derived rules carried forward for REF 2029.

    What publications are eligible for REF 2029?

    Eligible outputs include journal articles and conference proceedings with an ISSN, plus long-form outputs such as monographs, book chapters and scholarly editions, which carry no open access requirement. Datasets, code, protocols and artistic creations are also welcomed, though they sit outside the open access policy’s scope entirely.

    What does the REF output rating measure?

    REF output quality is measured against three fundamental dimensions: originality, the development of new concepts or techniques; significance, the capacity to influence scholarly thought, policy or practice; and rigour, the intellectual coherence and robustness of the methodology. Open access exceptions affect eligibility, not the quality score itself, which panels assess independently.

    What this means for research offices ahead of REF 2029

    For research administration teams, exception management is now a compliance workstream in its own right, not an afterthought bolted onto repository deposit. With a five per cent (or one-output) tolerance per unit of assessment, a handful of poorly evidenced exceptions can tip a submission over the threshold and trigger removal of otherwise strong outputs. Institutions should build an exceptions log now, using Durham’s date-segmented structure as a template: separate outputs to 31 December 2025 from those from 1 January 2026, record the exception paragraph relied upon, and retain evidence when the exception first arises, not retrospectively. Given that REF 2021 audits produced adjustments even at confident institutions, a living exceptions file — not a retrospective justification exercise — separates a smooth submission from a last-minute scramble.

  • REF 2029 Open Access Policy: Deposit & Embargo Rules Explained

    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?

    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.

  • REF 2029 Outputs Decoupling: What It Signals for Contribution Recognition

    REF 2029 decouples research outputs from named researchers: institutions submit outputs to a Unit of Assessment rather than to an individual, judged instead on a “substantive link” between the institution and the work. This shifts REF evaluation from researcher performance to institutional research environment, raising the stakes for how contribution is separately evidenced.

    Decoupling is the REF 2029 policy mechanism that removes the formal link between a submitted research output and the named staff member who produced it, so that outputs are assessed as belonging to a Unit of Assessment (UoA) rather than to an individual author.

    What does “decoupling” mean under REF 2029?

    Under REF 2029, outputs are submitted to a Unit of Assessment without staff details attached to individual pieces of work. No researcher name is carried through the submission record, and no output is presented as belonging to one specific author for assessment purposes.

    This reshapes the submitted category itself: what was previously called “outputs” is now Contributions to Knowledge and Understanding (CKU), which carries a 55% weighting in the overall institutional score, according to REF 2029’s official Section 1 overview. The remaining weighting splits between Strategy, People and Research Environment (20%) and Engagement and Impact (roughly 25%).

    Practical consequences of decoupling include:

    • No minimum or maximum number of outputs required from any individual staff member.
    • A recommended (not mandatory) ceiling of five outputs per researcher, reinstated in REF 2029’s December 2025 update after an earlier proposal for no cap at all.
    • Eligibility broadened to outputs produced by a wider range of roles, including technicians and research managers, not only conventionally “REF-able” academic staff.

    Instead of an author-output link, REF 2029 requires institutions to demonstrate a substantive link between the submitting institution and the output. A substantive link is generally established through an eligible employment relationship of at least 12 months at a minimum of 0.2 full-time equivalent (FTE), per REF 2029’s guidance on Contributions to Knowledge and Understanding.

    Where employment alone is insufficient or the researcher has since left, institutions may point to supporting evidence such as:

    • Internal research support, including funding for materials, technical assistance, or conference attendance.
    • Evidence of work-in-progress presentations, internal or external.
    • An external grant supporting a relevant programme of research held during the employment period.

    Outputs cannot be claimed where the substantive link occurred only after the output was made public and the author was subject to compulsory redundancy — a safeguard REF 2029 added following sector feedback on the risk of institutions retaining the outputs of staff they had made redundant.

    How does this differ from REF 2014 and REF 2021?

    Decoupling is not new to REF 2029; it extends a direction of travel set out in the 2016 Stern Review of the REF, which recommended non-portability of outputs to reduce “poaching” incentives that favoured wealthier institutions. Each REF cycle has progressively loosened the tie between researcher identity and institutional claim.

    REF cycle Output–researcher link Portability on staff move
    REF 2014 Output captured entirely by the institution employing the researcher at the census date Full transfer with the researcher
    REF 2021 Output could be captured by both the origin and destination institution on a move Partial (dual claim)
    REF 2029 Output captured by the institution demonstrating a substantive link; no named author attached Restricted; long-form outputs (e.g. monographs) retain five-year portability

    The volume of outputs an institution must submit is unchanged in formula terms: it remains the institution’s staff volume measure (FTE) multiplied by 2.5 at UoA level, consistent with the REF 2021 approach reported by REF 2029 planning guidance published by the University of Reading and others.

    What does decoupling signal for evidencing contribution?

    REF 2029’s decoupling addresses institutional-level attribution — which organisation gets credit for an output — but it does not answer a separate, longstanding question: which individuals, and in what capacity, actually contributed to producing it. That question sits squarely in the domain of contributorship taxonomies rather than research assessment exercises.

    This is where the REF 2029 shift and the contributor-role movement intersect without colliding. CASRAI originated the CRediT contributor role taxonomy in 2014 to make individual contribution to scholarly outputs explicit and machine-readable; the standard is now stewarded by NISO as ANSI/NISO Z39.104-2022. Where REF 2029 deliberately removes the researcher’s name from the assessment record, CRediT statements retained in the published output itself remain the mechanism by which an individual’s specific role — conceptualisation, methodology, writing, data curation — stays evidenced and citable, independent of how any national assessment exercise chooses to allocate institutional credit.

    For institutions, the practical implication is that internal recognition, promotion, and workload evidence can no longer lean on REF submission data as a proxy for individual contribution, because REF 2029 submissions will not carry that data. Institutions building internal case files for tenure, promotion, or grant applications need contribution evidence that exists independently of the REF submission — structured CRediT role statements attached to outputs, ORCID-linked publication records, and clear internal documentation of the “substantive link” evidence (funding, supervision, work-in-progress records) that REF 2029 itself now requires institutions to compile.

    Guidance on research administration practice and on the underlying CRediT taxonomy is a reasonable starting point for research offices building this parallel evidence base ahead of the REF 2029 submission window.

    Answer-first questions on REF 2029 outputs

    What are the changes in REF 2029 for outputs?

    REF 2029 renames outputs as Contributions to Knowledge and Understanding (CKU), weighted at 55% of the overall score, removes individual minimum and maximum output requirements, reinstates a recommended cap of five outputs per researcher, and requires a substantive link rather than a named author for eligibility.

    Why is REF 2029’s decoupling of outputs important?

    It marks a formal shift in what REF measures: institutional research environment and support, not individual researcher performance. Funding allocation logic follows institutions, so REF 2029 aligns assessment evidence with who receives the funding — the institution — rather than the individual author of an output.

    What outputs are eligible for REF 2029?

    Eligible outputs must be brought into the public domain between 1 January 2021 and 31 December 2028, meet REF 2029’s open access requirements, and demonstrate a substantive link to the submitting institution. Outputs solely authored by PhD students or teaching-only staff are generally not eligible.

    Are REF 2029 outputs portable when staff move institution?

    Portability is now restricted rather than automatic. Long-form outputs, such as monographs, retain five-year portability so they stay attached to the author after a move; most other outputs are captured by whichever institution holds the substantive link at the point of submission.

    Implications and outlook for institutions

    Research offices preparing for REF 2029 face two parallel evidencing tasks rather than one. The first is REF-facing: documenting the substantive link — employment records, internal research support, grant funding — for every output an institution intends to submit. The second is internal: maintaining contribution records that support promotion, recognition, and researcher career narratives now that REF submissions themselves will not do this job.

    Sector commentary, including analysis from Wonkhe’s research and innovation desk, has framed this as REF revealing its true purpose: an institutional funding mechanism rather than a personal-merit exercise. Institutions that treat the two evidencing tasks as genuinely separate — REF eligibility on one track, individual contribution recognition on another — are better placed to avoid a governance gap where good research goes on the REF return but the people who did it go unrecorded anywhere durable.

  • REF 2029 Portability: What Changes for Moving Staff

    REF 2029 portability ends automatic transfer of most research outputs when staff change institutions. Outputs are now “decoupled” from individual authors and instead require a demonstrable “substantive link” to the submitting institution, with one exception: long-form outputs such as monographs stay portable with the author for five years. The rule, confirmed by the four UK funding bodies in December 2025, replaces the dual-submission compromise used in REF 2021.

    Portability, in REF terms, is the rule set that determines which institution — the one a researcher has left, or the one they have joined — may submit a given research output for assessment. REF 2029 narrows that rule further than any previous exercise, and the change has become one of the most contested elements of the framework’s redesign.

    What REF 2029 Changes for Portability

    REF 2029’s initial decisions, published in 2023, “decoupled” research outputs from the individual researchers who produced them. Where REF 2021 attributed outputs to named staff on a submission list, REF 2029 requires only that a submitting institution demonstrate a substantive link to the output — evidence that it supported the underlying research.

    Research England’s Head of REF Policy has described this as a shift toward assessing “how well organisations are supporting research excellence” rather than tracking individual output counts. In practice, that means the REF volume measure and staff lists are no longer the sole determinants of which outputs an institution may submit.

    For standard outputs — journal articles, conference papers, most datasets and software — the substantive link is generally established by an eligible employment relationship between the institution and the author when the research was conducted or the output first made publicly available. Once a researcher leaves, that link does not automatically transfer to their new employer.

    This is a marked departure from REF 2021, which let both the origin and destination institution return an output where a researcher transferred, and from REF 2014, where only the destination institution could submit if the move happened before a single census date. The table below sets out how the rule has moved across three cycles.

    REF cycle Portability rule Long-form treatment
    REF 2014 Single census date; only the destination institution could submit if a researcher moved before it No separate treatment
    REF 2021 Compromise rule: both origin and destination institutions could return the same output on transfer No separate treatment
    REF 2029 Outputs decoupled from individuals; standard outputs require a substantive institutional link and are not portable Portable for five years if the new post began within that window

    The REF 2021 compromise itself had a contested history: Lord Stern’s 2016 independent review of the REF recommended full non-portability, but Research England judged that too significant a change to introduce that late in the REF 2021 cycle, and adopted dual submission instead.

    Why Long-Form Outputs Get a Five-Year Exception

    On 10 December 2025, following a three-month pause and intense sector pushback, REF 2029 published updated guidance restoring limited portability for “long-form and extended-process” outputs — monographs, edited collections and scholarly editions. These remain attached to the author for five years, provided the researcher’s employment at the new institution began within that window.

    According to Times Higher Education’s reporting on the announcement, institutions can deploy this exception where the academic was employed at some point during a two-year staff census window that opened in September 2025 — though commentators on that same report disputed how directly the census window bears on long-form eligibility, underlining how unsettled the operational detail still is.

    Reaction split along familiar lines. Jennifer Richards, chair of the English Association and professor of English literature at the University of Cambridge, called herself “delighted that an element of portability has been restored,” describing it as “a ‘win’ for all researchers in a sector that has become increasingly precarious at every stage of career.” Margot Finn, vice-president for higher education and research at the British Academy, called the concession “excellent and very welcome.” Rosa Freedman, professor of law at the University of Reading, was less convinced, arguing the “half in-half out” approach “doesn’t seem to have much logic” and that outputs should belong either wholly to the employer or wholly to the researcher.

    What the Sector Consultation Flagged as Unresolved Risk

    Sector consultation ahead of the December 2025 decision surfaced risks that the rule change does not fully resolve. Institutions can still retain long-form outputs credited to staff they have since made redundant — a concession the reversal did not touch. Several concerns recur across the consultation record:

    • Early-career and precariously employed researchers lose standard outputs as a bargaining tool when applying for new posts, since those outputs no longer travel with them.
    • Redundant staff may see their long-form outputs retained and submitted by an institution that has already ended their employment.
    • Co-authored outputs where authors move to different institutions raise unresolved questions about which institution’s substantive link takes precedence, particularly where authorship attribution is contested.
    • Discipline-specific impact: arts, humanities and social science bodies — including the English Association, the Institute of English Studies and University English — wrote jointly to flag that decoupling disproportionately affects fields where long-form outputs and precarious contracts are both common.

    A joint Wonkhe analysis by academics at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, the University of Oxford and the University of Edinburgh went further, warning that decoupling removes any auditable limit on how many outputs by one individual a unit can submit, which they argued undermines the diversity-of-contribution goal the rule change was partly designed to serve.

    Common Questions on REF 2029 Portability

    What period does REF 2029 cover?

    REF 2029 runs on an extended timetable after the exercise was renamed from REF 2028 to REF 2029 in a December 2023 decision. The criteria-setting phase runs to summer 2026, the assessment phase is planned for winter 2028 to autumn 2029, with results published in December 2029.

    What outputs are eligible for REF 2029?

    Standard outputs are eligible where the submitting institution demonstrates a substantive link — typically an eligible employment relationship with the author when the research was conducted or first made public. Long-form outputs, such as monographs, remain eligible at a new institution for five years after the researcher’s move.

    What is the weighting for REF 2029?

    REF 2029’s December 2025 guidance weights Contributions to Knowledge and Understanding at 55% of the overall quality profile, Engagement and Impact at 25%, and Strategy, People and Research Environment at 20%, shifting emphasis toward institutional research culture rather than individual output counts.

    Is it REF 2028 or REF 2029?

    It is REF 2029. The four UK funding bodies renamed the exercise from REF 2028 to REF 2029 in December 2023, extending the assessment timetable to give institutions more time to adjust to decoupling, open access and portability rule changes ahead of results in December 2029.

    What Institutions Should Do Next

    Research administrators handling staff transfers should treat the substantive-link test, not the researcher’s current employer, as the operative question for every output under consideration. That means auditing when each output’s underlying research was conducted or first made public, and mapping it against the employment record at that time — a task that sits squarely with research administration teams managing REF submission pipelines.

    For long-form outputs, institutions should document the five-year window and the justification for classifying a work as “long-form and extended-process” at the point of hire, not retrospectively. Because the rule change also reopens questions about how authorship attribution interacts with institutional submission rights, joint appointments and co-authored outputs deserve particular scrutiny before the assessment phase begins in 2027.

    The sector consultation record makes clear that portability remains an unresolved fairness question, not a settled technical rule. Institutions that build audit trails now — rather than waiting for further REF guidance — will be better placed when panels begin assessing submissions from 2028 onward.