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HEFCE requires that to be eligible for submission to the post-2014 REF, the final peer reviewed (‘author accepted’) manuscript of all articles and conference proceedings submitted from 1 April 2016 must be deposited in an open access institutional or subject repository (such as ORA) within three (3) months of being accepted for publication (the date of acceptance being as given in the acceptance letter or e-mail from the publication to the author).

The title and author of these deposits and other descriptive information must be discoverable straight away by anyone with a search engine.

The manuscripts must then be accessible for anyone to read and download once any reasonable embargo period has elapsed.

‘Non-compliant outputs will be given an unclassified score and will not be assessed in the REF’.

The change in policy formally takes effect for outputs accepted for publication from 1 April 2016, but in order to be fully compliant by that date, colleagues are encouraged to start Acting on Acceptance from now.

In response to HEFCE’s changed OA policy, the message, to all academics and researchers employed by the collegiate University, is:

  • deposit all your newly-accepted journal articles and conference papers into ORA
  • do it through Symplectic Elements
  • do it within 3 months of the date of acceptance
  • start now

The Bodleian team will check copyright and licensing conditions, create an ORA record and make the full-text available after the embargo period.

The deposited version of the manuscript can be replaced by an updated-peer reviewed version or the published version of record at a later date.

The manuscripts must then be accessible for anyone to read and download once any embargo period has elapsed.

Where outputs have no embargo they must be made open access within one month of deposit.

Listing or posting papers on personal or departmental web sites does not meet HEFCE requirement.

Help and advice available from: