The Research Excellence Framework (REF) is the UKs system for assessing the quality and impact of UK research. All researchers at the University of Bristol need to ensure that their work is made open access in line with the REF policy.
Our open access for journal articles page will show you how to make your work compliant with the REF open access policy.

Outputs that need to be open access

• Original Research Journal Articles
• Peer reviewed conference papers in proceedings with an ISSN Number

Comment pieces, editorials, protocols, methods papers, data articles, book reviews and similar articles do not need to be made open access, though you can still make them open access using the Scholarly Works Policy.

Open Access Funding

The University of Bristol does not have an open access fund for REF publications. However you can use our open access deals to get gold open access in hybrid journals at no cost to you.

Instructions

Follow the instructions on our open access for journal articles page so that either:

• The final published version is available on the publisher's website with a Creative Commons licence (preferably CC-BY)

Or

• The Accepted Manuscript is available in Pure with no more than a 12 (Science/Technology/Medicine research) or 24 (Arts/Humanities/Social Sciences research) month embargo, and is uploaded within three months of acceptance

Deposit in other repositories, such as arXiv.org can also be compliant, but we still need a record in pure for audit purposes.

As soon as the article has been published online, add the date of publication to the Pure record. This let the the Open Access Team know that it has been published and allow them make your output visible on Explore Bristol Research, in line with the REF open access requirements.

Please note that in some cases, outputs will need to have been made accessible within 1 month of publication to compliant with the REF open access policy, so it is important that records are updated swiftly upon publication.

Exceptions

If you have not made your article open access, or if you have, but it was more than three months after acceptance for publication, then it may still be possible to make your work compliant by claiming an exception. Please fill out a REF Open Access Exception Request Form.

If you do not believe an exception applies, please still fill out the form and select "No valid exception".

Additional Resources

• Our guide to making your journal article open access will help you understand how to comply with this policy
• The UKRI Open Access Policy Flowchart (PDF, 69kB) will show you how to make your work compliant with the REF open access policy
• For more detail, see the full REF open access policy