The four UK higher education funding bodies have published the full Open Access Policy for REF 2029.

The policy will apply to journal articles and conference proceedings that have an ISSN. There is no open access requirement for any other output types, such as monographs. 

Requirements

The author accepted manuscript for all journal articles and conference proceedings should be deposited in Pure upon acceptance.

Research outputs should be licensed as openly as possible; the funding bodies strong preference is for licensing as CC-BY or other license formats meeting this standard of openness.

Implementation dates

• The revised open access policy requirements for REF 2029 will apply from 01 January 2026.
• The current REF Open Access policy requirements will continue to apply for all in-scope outputs up to this date. 

Support and further information

Queen’s Open Research Team has created a page dedicated to the Open Access requirements for REF. You can find more information on the policy, details of training offered, and a short introductory video here.

If you have any queries regarding the policy or you would like to arrange some training for your school, please email openaccess@qub.ac.uk