REFlecting on progress towards open access - Research England

"In March 2014, the four UK funding bodies announced an open access policy for the next Research Excellence Framework (REF 2021). The policy states that publically funded research should be discoverable and free to read and download from 1 April 2016.

REF2021 OA policy is working

Fast forward four years and the REF 2021 OA policy has established itself as one of the driving forces behind outputs from the UK’s academic community being freely available to read and download. A report published today shows that the UK is making huge strides towards open access. Over eighty percent of outputs that are within scope of the REF OA policy are meeting the policy requirements, or an exception is known to apply.

Compliance progress

The report is a snapshot of all outputs in scope of the REF open access policy, monitoring the first year of policy implementation from 1 April 2016 to 31 March 2017. It shows that sixty one percent of outputs are compliant with the policy, with a further twenty percent reporting a known exception. Significantly, a high proportion of outputs where an exception to the policy is known to apply are freely available through the ‘gold’ open access route. ‘Gold’ open access refers to publishing in a way that allows immediate access to everyone electronically and free of charge. These outputs are fulfilling the policy intent...."