Books ‘should be open access within two years’ for REF submission

Scholarly monographs and other long-form outputs must be made available to open access within two years of publication if they are to be submitted to the UK’s next Research Excellence Framework, funders have proposed.

Launching a consultation, the country’s funding bodies have reiterated their long-stated ambition that the open-access mandate that currently applies to journal articles should be extended to books for the 2029 assessment of national research standards, which governs the distribution of around £2 billion annually in block grants.

As well as allowing a two-year embargo, longer than is allowed for articles, the proposed policy does allow a series of exceptions, including where “the only appropriate publisher, after liaison and consideration, is unable to offer an open access option that complies with the REF policy”; and where “the publication concerned requires an embargo period that exceeds the stated maxima and was the most appropriate publication venue for the output”.

These exceptions are particularly intended to ensure compliance for long-form outputs that are published overseas – which represented around one in five of those considered for the 2014 REF.

And the proposed policy would not apply to outputs published before the start of 2026 or titles that had publication agreements in place before that date.

However, the four funding bodies that run the REF say they still expect 90 per cent of all long-form outputs submitted to the REF to be made available to open access – although this is lower than the 95 per cent threshold applied to articles.

“The four UK higher education funding bodies recognise that there are special considerations in respect of long-form publications and embargo periods with author and publisher interests, in terms of their ability to realise their commercial interests. There is a need to balance this with the imperative to ensure that open-access obligations are met within a reasonable period,” the consultation document says.

“Noting that most sales occur within the first two years post-publication, the four UK higher education funding bodies propose that a maximum embargo period of 24 months should be applicable where this is a contractual requirement of the publisher.”

The consultation, which also outlines a series of proposed changes to the requirements for journal articles, comes several years after UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) – the umbrella body for UK-wide research councils and Research England, which administers the REF – outlined its own open-access policy.

Under those rules, any articles based on scholarship funded by UKRI councils had to be made freely available at the point of publication from April 2022, with a similar requirement – albeit with the option of a 12-month embargo – applying to monographs from January 2024.

As with the REF policy, books were the most controversial element of the UKRI policy, with arts and humanities scholars having raised concerns about whether sufficient funding would be available to cover the processing charges associated with open-access publishing, as well as the impact on smaller publishers.

On journal articles, the new consultation proposes that the embargo periods for open-access publication should be shortened compared with the rules for the 2021 exercise, from 12 months to six for main panels A and B – covering medicine, health and life sciences, and physical sciences, engineering and mathematics – and from 24 months to 12 for main panels C and D – covering social sciences and the arts and humanities.

The 2029 exercise would continue to recognise preprints as outputs, but a shift in policy would require these to be “the version of record or author accepted manuscript, rather than a preliminary or transitional ‘near final’ version”, as allowed in REF 2021.

The consultation will run until 17 June, with the final open-access policy expected to be published later this year.

“The open-access policy for the REF will have a real impact on making research more open and equitable, and it’s important we get it right. Through this consultation we want to engage as widely as possible to make sure that we hear the views of all those impacted,” said Steven Hill, chair of the REF steering group.

“To do this the REF team is working with some sector organisations to schedule consultation events to engage directly with the research community on these proposals.”

chris.havergal@timeshighereducation.com