Open Access at Kent

Open Access and the REF

What we recommend you do to make sure your work meets the requirements for the Research Excellence Framework.

A new REF 2029 Open Access policy has been published and applies to articles and conference proceedings published from the 1st January 2026.

For publications prior to this the REF 2021 Open Access policy applies.

Articles and conference proceedings published between 1 January 2021 and 31 December 2025, are subject to the REF 2021 Open Access Policy See Sections 5 and 6   

Articles and conference proceedings published between 1 January 2026 and 31 December 2028 are subject to the  REF 2029 Open Access Policy   

What's different in the REF 2029 OA Policy?

  • Outputs are required to be deposited on publication (no later than 3 months after) rather than on acceptance for publication 

Allowable embargo periods for compliance via deposit of Author Accepted Manuscripts have been reduced to 

  • 6 months for panels A and B
  • 12 months for panels C and D 
  • A similar range of permitted exceptions still apply but there have been some minor changes

Newly in scope for the REF 2029 OA Policy:

  • Outputs published by a journal or conference proceedings which do not require peer review. Previously only peer-reviewed articles and conference proceedings were in scope   

Out of scope of REF 2029 OA Policy:

  • Books, chapters, edited collections or any other output types are not subject to OA requirements for REF 2029  
  • Pre-print articles or any other output types without an ISSN, are not subject to open access requirements  

To be eligible for the REF

Publish OA on the journal site using a CC BY, CC BY NC, CC BY ND or CC BY NC ND licence and deposit in KAR 

 OR 

deposit your Author Accepted Manuscript in the Kent Academic Repository (KAR) upon acceptance 

What we recommend you do

  • Check which journals are covered by our Read and Publish agreements. Articles in these journals will be OA upon publication on the journal site.  They automatically meet OA REF requirements. 
  • Fill in the form on the REF Assisted Deposit page to send us your article to add to KAR for you.  Continue to do this upon acceptance.   
  • Ensure all your publications are added to KAR. To check which of your publications are in KAR use the Browse function in KAR and select Browse by Person, or use the Advanced Search.  Be aware that the Manage Deposits area of KAR does not represent your full publication list 

What we are doing to help

  •  We now use automated services which send us details about some Kent articles and conference proceedings directly into KAR. We check and edit this information, make it live in KAR and let you know we have added the article on your behalf.  However, this service is not exhaustive, and it remains the responsibility of academic staff to ensure that their publications are listed in KAR 

REF Assisted Deposit service: we do your KAR entries for you

REF Assisted Deposit is a service for researchers. We’ll upload these publications to KAR for you:

  • journal articles
  • published conference papers

Please send your item as soon as possible after acceptance by the publisher.

Only recent publications can be added via this service. If you are a new member of staff and you wish to add your previous outputs to KAR, please see Ways to add records to KAR on the webpage. Please email researchsupport@kent.ac.uk if you need help importing publication details.

Send us your publication

Use this short online form

We need the post-peer-review version, also called author accepted manuscript.

What happens next

We'll prioritise requests by acceptance date. We may need to email you if we need any extra information that we can't get from the publisher website.

FAQs

Long form publications (books, book chapters and edited collections) are not included in the 2021 or 2029 OA REF policies.  The inclusion of these types was proposed in the OA REF consultation, but it was eventually decided to delay this until the post 2029 REF.   

However, Research England has stated that institutions should be proactive in making these types of outputs openly access. Institutions who can demonstrate this may be rewarded under the People, Culture and Environment component of REF2029. Our Make your book or chapter OA web page will help  

It is University policy that a record of all research outputs must be made in KAR.   

Be aware that many funders such as UKRI, Wellcome, NIHR, Horizon Europe do now require Open Access publication for books and book chapters. For full details see our Open Access and UKRI funded projects page and our Open Access and funder requirements page .  

A pre-print is the version of an article that has not been peer-reviewed.   

The OA REF 2029 requirements state that outputs published by a journal or conference proceedings which do not require peer review are subject to the OA requirements from Jan 2026 onwards.  However, only outputs that are published in a journal or on a site that has an International Standard Serial Number (ISSN) are in scope.    

Pre-prints or any article or conference proceeding that are made available on a site that does not issue an ISSN are not subject to the OA requirements.   

 Pre-reviewed articles published through open publication platforms such as NIHR Open Research meet the OA requirements by default.   

You should still add the final peer reviewed version of the article to KAR.   
It is University policy that a record of all research outputs must be made in KAR. Use our REF Assisted Deposit service and we will do this for you .  

You can, if you wish, also record the earlier pre-print prior to peer-review 

  • Provide the DOI or URL to the pre-print platform where it is available  
  • Use only the "Published online" date type  
  • A separate record can then be made in KAR for subsequent publication on the same platform, in a journal or on another platform. Use the “related resources” field to create links to and from the “pre-print” record in KAR and the “article” record in KAR.  For example,  https://kar.kent.ac.uk/104084/  

 Articles published OA on a journal site automatically meet the requirements.  They should be labelled as “open access” and must contain a Creative Commons licence statement. You should still add the article to KAR.   
It is University policy that a record of all research outputs must be made in KAR. The full text of the article can be uploaded to the entry. Use our REF Assisted Deposit service and we will do this for you.   

This is an approach that has been adopted at many UK Universities over the last few years.  See   https://student.kent.ac.uk/studies/open-access-at-kent/author-rights-retention    for an explanation. 

We aim to adopt this approach at Kent and have it in place by June 2025. This will enable you to meet REF OA requirements through deposit of your AAM in KAR with no embargo and a CC BY licence.   

Discussions and briefings about author rights retention at Kent took place during 2024. An author rights retention approach has been incorporated into the revision of the University’s Open Access Policy. This policy has been reviewed, re-written and re-named by the Library’s Open Research Team. The draft policy can be viewed here. Further detailed information and guidance about rights retention will be made available throughout 2025 as we progress   

Articles and conference proceedings should be published under a CC BY licence whenever possible. The policy states a ‘strong preference’ for a CC BY. However, CC-BY-NC,  CC-BY-ND and CC-BY-NC-ND are permitted. See this explanation of the Creative Commons licences

This is not a requirement until January 2026.   At the moment we are not in a position at Kent to advise that you can do this as a matter of course.  It is one of the reasons we are pursuing an Author Rights Retention approach. When we have adopted the Author Rights Retention approach at Kent you will be able to upload your AAM to KAR with a CC BY licence as standard practice.  However, some publishers already allow this. See JISC’s Open policy finder for details about publishers’ policies on OA archiving.    

The shorter embargo periods only apply to articles published after January 2026.  By this time, we aim to have an Author Rights Retention policy in place which will enable you to upload your AAM to KAR and make it available without any embargo.  

Upload your AAM to KAR as usual using the REF Assisted Deposit Service.  We will interpret the embargo situation for you and if necessary, apply the exception permitted by the policy that exists for situations such as these.   

No.
The REF OA policy states that authors are not required to pay fees to make their outputs open access. You can instead use KAR to upload the Author Accepted Manuscript of your output and make them open access, sometimes after an embargo period.   See our Read and Publish journal search to identify journals where the costs of OA publishing are covered by the agreements the library has with publishers.  

If the accepted manuscript has been deposited in a repository within the required timeframe by one of your co-authors, it is compliant. We can create an entry in KAR that links to the other repository. Please contact the Open Research Team researchsupport@kent.ac.uk who will assist with this.    

Yes. 
It is important that all outputs are added to KAR, so that they are eligible for submission regardless of where the authors are based at the time of the next REF.   

Help

Need research support or advice? Email researchsupport@kent.ac.uk

Find out all the ways you can get in touch.   

Research support links

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