arXiv and REF – together at last? | Unlocking Research

"New draft REF2021 guidance was released for consultation on Monday morning. Buried half-way through this daunting 139 page document was an update to the REF Open Access policy. This revised policy comes on the back of Research England’s report Monitoring sector progress towards compliance with funder open access policies which was released in June, and on which we have already commented. From an Open Access perspective, additional flexibility for preprint servers has been added to the policy...

That’s a significant adjustment to previous advice and will be of considerable relief to many researchers who routinely publish their research in this way. Indeed, we have lobbied behind the scenes on this policy issue for more than three years.

But what does this actually mean and what should institutions and authors take from this?..."