Open Access Compliance and the REF

To be eligible for submission to the next REF, authors should upload their final accepted manuscripts of articles and conference proceedings to UBIR. Find out how to submit your research to UBIR

To be eligible, papers must be deposited to UBIR and must comply with the applicable REF2029 Open Access Policy requirements as detailed below. 

• The policy applies to journal articles and conference papers
• Monographs, book chapters, reports, and other output types are not included but depositing into UBIR is encouraged.

There are some changes to the Open Access requirements for REF2029, depending on when the article or conference paper is published (please note that books, book chapters, reports, or other types of outputs do not need to comply with the Open Access policy for REF).

For journal articles and conference proceedings with an ISSN published between 1 January 2021 and 31 December 2025, the same open access policy requirements for REF2021 apply:

• The article must be deposited in UBIR. Ensure that your Accepted Manuscript (the version after peer-review and accepted for publication but before any publisher typesetting or proofs are produced) is deposited into UBIR.

• The article must be deposited as soon after the point of acceptance as possible, and no later than three months after the date of acceptance.

• If your article was published via the Green open access route (where the published version is behind a paywall but the Accepted Manuscript is available via UBIR), an embargo of up to 12 months for Main Panels A and B; or 24 months for Main Panels C and D is permitted.

• Articles published via the Gold open access route (where the Published Version is available open access with a form of Creative Commons licence) are fully compliant with the policy. These articles and papers should still be added to UBIR to complete your Researcher Profile.

For journal articles and conference proceedings with an ISSN published from 1 January 2026, the new open access policy requirements for REF2029 apply:

• The article must have been published via the Gold open access route or be deposited into UBIR if published via the Green open access route.

• The article must have been deposited within three months of publication. To ensure this requirement is met, we strongly recommend you continue to deposit your Accepted Manuscript upon acceptance to avoid missing the deadline.

• If your article was published via the Green open access route an embargo of up to 6 months for Main Panels A and B; or 12 months for Main Panels C and D is allowable.

• CC-BY licence is strongly preferred. CC BY-NC, CC BY-ND and CC BY-NC-ND are permitted. Where an output has been made available via the Green open access route, if a publisher does not allow the Accepted Manuscript to be made open access with a Creative Commons licence, there will be an allowable exception to this requirement.

You can read the full policy and information on exceptions on the REF2029 policy webpage.

If you have any questions about depositing your research to ensure it can be submitted for REF2029, please contact ubir@bolton.ac.uk