Pure for REF

The current REF open access policy requires that full-text versions of articles published in journals, and conference papers published with an ISSN must be deposited to a suitable open access repository within three months of their acceptance. The version that needs to be uploaded is the final accepted manuscript, after peer-review but without publisher's typesetting.

At King's, to ensure compliance with the policy, researchers upload their papers to Pure, King’s institutional repository. Data and full-text from Pure populates King's researchers' profiles on the King’s Research Portal, making the outputs openly available. 

 Key features of the current REF open access policy

• The policy applies to journal articles and conference proceedings with an ISSN. Monographs, other long-form publications, creative or non-text outputs and data are unaffected.
• Affected research outputs that do not comply will not be eligible for REF submission – unless there was a legitimate reason that compliance was not met (please see the list of deposit and access exceptions)
• Deposit must be of the author’s accepted and final peer reviewed manuscript version (sometimes known as the "post-print" version), not the publisher's final pdf.
• Qualifying outputs must have a record created in a repository within 90 days of the date of acceptance (the date of the publisher's notification) and the author's accepted and final peer reviewed version of the full-text of the paper must be appended.
• It is deposit within the time limit that is mandated - not the public accessibility of your paper. Most journals require you to embargo any paper you upload to Pure, to hide it from the public for a set period.
• The maximum acceptable embargo periods are 12 months for REF Panels A and B, and 24 months for REF Panels C and D. King's researchers, thanks to the Rights Retention Strategy, can make their accepted manuscripts openly available immediately on publication, without any embargo. 

Complying with the policy at King's

Qualifying research must be deposited in an acceptable repository such as Pure at the point of acceptance (or in the following 90 days). See our 'Deposit' tab for a quick guide. Further support with creating or modifying Pure records is available from the Library Research Support team at librarypure@kcl.ac.uk. If you have any questions about complying with open access requirements for REF, please contact the Research Support team at openaccess@kcl.ac.uk

REF2029: claiming exceptions

To submit any journal articles and conference proceedings with an ISSN to REF2029, authors must comply with the REF open access policy. The policy is summarised on the Act on acceptance tab and how to comply one-page guide.

While failure to deposit the appropriate version within the time limit will render an output ineligible for submission to the next REF, Research England recognise that their requirements may for various reasons not always be achievable. Consequently, in certain circumstances an output may be excepted from the open access requirements and still be submissible to REF2029.

For instance, as long as the exception is claimed, they will accept articles appearing in journals that do not permit deposit in repositories - as long as the author considers that journal the most appropriate publication for the output. Similarly, if the journal will permit deposit in a repository, but only after more time than Research England consider acceptable (more than 12 months for STEM subjects; more than 24 months for Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences), it will also be possible to claim an exception for an output. Several other circumstances, both personal and technical, may prevent deposit within the time limit, or deposit at all, and Research England have recognised many as exceptions.

Below is a summary of the exceptions that can be claimed to the open access portion of the policy for the next REF. They are ordered from those we expect to be most commonly used to those we expect to be used rarely. If you are not able to deposit as required and think one applies to you, it will be necessary to report it. Please click on the statement below that you believe applies to you and follow the instructions within to claim an exception for a given publication.

Creating Digital Object Identifiers (DOI) for grey literature.

In addition to creating and maintaining DOIs for datasets, Libraries & Collections can also create DOIs for ‘grey literature’ items.

While Libraries & Collections has created and maintained DOIs for datasets for several years, we can now offer DOIs also for ‘grey literature’ items. Grey literature might include outputs, such as working papers, protocols, reports and other items which do not have a traditional publication route (e.g., journal or book format), but where the research findings might benefit from being made more widely accessible and/or in a format possibly more suited to non-academic audiences, such as a pamphlet.

A DOI can be created and added to the document and it will then be published on Pure and made immediately accessible via the King’s Research Portal.

What is a DOI?

DOI stands for Digital Object Identifier which is a unique online reference to an object which contains details of how that object can be accessed.

Why should you get a DOI?

By assigning DOIs to research outputs, researchers can benefit from easier citation which can be tracked and measured more consistently. It means that the output will remain persistently accessible for the long term and will not fall victim to broken links and Error 404. By assigning a DOI to research outputs King's is committing to make this item persistently accessible and to as wide an audience as possible. King’s also commits to undertake any updates that may be required to deliver this.

How to get a DOI?

If you have something that might fall into the grey literature category or think this format might be helpful in disseminating findings of your research, then please get in touch.

If you have an active Pure profile, then please add details of the output to Pure and forward your request to us – making sure to include the Pure ID (email: research.data@kcl.ac.uk).

Please go to our Pure for REF page to see how to deposit and add details of a research output to Pure.

More generally, for more information or to find out if your output is eligible for a DOI, please contact the Research Support team (email: research.data@kcl.ac.uk).