BU Research Blog

It’s Day 3 of International Open Access Week! Today we are focusing on why Open Access is important for REF, and how BU authors can ensure their outputs comply with the REF 2029 open access policy.

The Research Excellence Framework (REF) is the UK’s system for assessing the excellence of research in UK higher education providers (HEIs). The REF outcomes are used to inform the allocation of around £2 billion per year of public funding for universities’ research.

We are currently preparing for the next exercise, REF 2029.

The REF 2029 Open Access Policy applies to journal articles and conference contributions with an ISSN that are submitted to the REF. For these output types to be eligible for submission they must be made open access, and as stated in the policy, “should be published and/or deposited (as relevant), discoverable, and free to read, download and search within, by anyone with an internet connection.”

Long-form outputs such as books, book chapters and monographs are not in scope for the REF 2029 open access policy, although an open access requirement is planned for a future REF exercise.

What this means for BU authors

Authors should deposit manuscripts in BRIAN as soon as they are accepted for publication. This ensures that they will meet the deposit requirements of the REF open access policy.

The version to upload is the author accepted manuscript (AAM). This is generally the final version of the document which was editorially accepted for publication after peer review but before the publisher has added pagination, typesetting and branding etc.

If an output is published Gold Open Access, authors can deposit the published version of record in BRIAN.

Instructions on how to deposit a manuscript in BRIAN can be found on the Depositing your research section of the Library and Learning Services guide.

After the manuscript has been deposited in BRIAN, the BURO team will check and edit the record before making it live on the repository. The BURO Team will add an embargo on access to deposited outputs when this is required by publishers.

Authors should also ensure that they claim publications that are identified for them within BRIAN as soon as they are highlighted as pending. A copy of the manuscript should also be deposited immediately if this has not been done already.

Useful contacts

BURO@bournemouth.ac.uk

For guidance on depositing your research open access, including queries about which is the correct version to deposit in BRIAN, or for questions relating to copyright and licensing.

BRIAN@bournemouth.ac.uk

For all queries relating to BRIAN and staff profile pages, including on how to create publication records or claim outputs.