The official REF 2021 Open Access policy (pdf) applies to journal articles and conference proceedings with an ISSN that have been accepted for publication after 1 April 2016.
To be eligible for the REF, you need to:
- keep your Author Accepted Manuscript
- note the date your publication was accepted
- deposit your publication in the Kent Academic Repository (KAR) within a set period
- carefully consider publisher embargo periods
What you need to do
- Get started with our Summary guide (pdf)
- Find out which version of your article you need to submit
- Find out if your chosen journal complies: Checking journal compliance (pdf)
- What to do with your Conference and workshop items (pdf)
- Not sure what any of the terms mean? Check the Open Access glossary (pdf)
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.
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 aim to upload all items within 5 working days. We may need to email you if we need any extra information that we can't get from the publisher website.
Gold Open Access
Papers published via the Gold Open Access route comply automatically, but you must still make a record of your article available in KAR.
No specific licence is mandatory.
Help
Need research support or advice? Email researchsupport@kent.ac.uk
Find out all the ways you can get in touch.