We’re delighted to announce the availability of SHERPA REF, a ‘beta’ web service – funded and endorsed by the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) – that allows authors and institutions to quickly, accurately and easily check whether a journal in which they wish to publish complies with the open access (OA) policy for the Research Excellence Framework (REF).
The policy requires journal articles and conference proceedings accepted for publication after 1 April 2016 are made OA in order to be eligible for submission to the next REF. Universities need to ensure their submissions are eligible and comply with current policy under the four UK higher education funding bodies: HEFCE, Higher Education Funding Council for Wales, Scottish Funding Council and the Department of employment and learning in Northern Ireland.
By enabling authors to easily check their compliance, SHERPA REF saves time and effort for universities in checking they meet the requirements – estimated to take on average between 30-60 minutes.
For more information on SHERPA REF visit https://ref.sherpa.ac.uk/
A full press statement can be found here.