Pathways to OA Workshop Summary: REF Exceptions & Subject Repositories | Open Access Good Practice

"On the 25th January, UCL hosted a Pathfinder workshop on the topics of: research outputs that fall under the exceptions category of HEFCE’s REF OA policy the use of subject repositories as places of deposit by researchers and their institutions. Following an update from Hannah DeGroff on the REF Compliance Checker plugin for EPrints and the Publications Router service (which will populate institutional repositories and CRISs with their researcher papers), Catherine Sharp and Alan Bracey from UCL introduced the topic of REF exceptions and the investigative work that the Pathways to OA Pathfinder project has done in this area. Ben Johnson (Research Policy Adviser at HEFCE) was also present and reiterated the funding councils’ position on exceptions. Delegates then received an overview of the new Sherpa REF service which provides researchers and institutions guidance on journal compliance. Presentations about how Europe PubMed Central and arXiv could help with compliance checking followed a breakout session where attendees discussed their experience of dealing with exceptions.  A full report of the day, including links to slides, is available here."