Nothing to lose but our tiny royalty cheques: on the proposed open access books policy for the next REF - Samuel Moore

"Last week, UKRI announced its proposed updates to the open access policy for the next REF, which now includes monographs and other book-based outputs including edited volumes and scholarly editions (but not, despite the initial confusion, trade books). All eligible books submitted to the REF that are under contract from January 2026 would have to be made openly available no later than two years after publication (either in a repository or the final version of record on the publisher’s site). UKRI are currently consulting on these proposals and they are not set in stone.

To be sure, this is a gentle policy for which no additional funds have been earmarked by UKRI. In a recent article for Times Higher Education, Steven Hill, chair of the REF 2029 steering group, commented that “the proposed policy for monographs is permissive of a range of routes to open access, some of which have low or zero upfront costs.” A two-year embargo is something that can be negotiated with a publisher at the contract stage. Ideally, the final version of record would be deposited in the repository — buoyed by arguments that immediate open access does not negatively impact sales — but the final accepted version is also acceptable to UKRI. This is all possible with no fees being paid to the publisher, but it does require the publisher to prioritise their commitment to the scholarly community over a shorter term focus on commercial returns...."