The funding councils in the UK, represented by the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) have been consulting on the best way forward for encouraging the move to open access via the Research Exercise Framework (REF).  Changes would come into play after the current round, taking place in 2014.

The funding councils are suggesting that either the Author’s Accepted Manuscript (AAM) or the Version of Record (VoR) would be acceptable as submissions to the REF.  As such, they are considering requiring that all submissions to the REF after 2014 should be available in an institutional repository.

ALPSP has suggested that the VoR can continue to be the version under consideration by the REF Panels, given that it is the only version which will include any post-publication updates and links to other relevant information, such as the underlying data.  It is also the version that is deposited into dark archives by the publisher.  Publishers will continue to facilitate access by the REF Panels, where articles are not Gold OA or are under an embargo period (as now).

This does not conflict with the desire to promote OA.  The funding councils can still require that submissions to the REF are made OA via institutional repositories with appropriate embargo periods.  We have also suggested that it would be wise for the funding councils to require a link from the AAM to the VoR, so that users of the information can be sure that it is the most up to date, correct information available.  This will avoid any distortion to the ‘minutes of research’. 

We look forward to working with the funding councils as this policy develops.

Audrey McCulloch
Chief Executive

1 November 2013

HEFCE Consultation 
ALPSP response ALPSP Response HEFCE OA post 2014 Ref (Oct 2013) final (pdf)

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