Library Research Support Services

University of Plymouth researchers must create a record for all their University affiliated research outputs and deposit an appropriate version of each publication via their Pure profile. The University's Open Access policy aligns with REF: all journal articles and conference papers published in proceedings with an ISSN must be deposited within 90 days of acceptance

Authors are responsible for creating and maintaining an ORCID profile, keeping their Pure profile updated and making sure they understand how to comply with the Open Access Policy, requirements of the university, their funder and the REF.

Click here for the full policy document

The REF is a research assessment exercise undertaken by UK Higher Education Funding bodies and carried out by expert panels. It helps to provide evidence of the impact and benefit of research investment, to create information measures by which to compare institutions’ research and to inform selective allocation of research funding. Further information can be found on the REF website.

To be eligible for submission into REF 2029, papers in academic journals and conference papers with an ISSN must have the author's accepted manuscript, as a minimum standard of version, deposited into our institutional repository [PEARL] via Pure within 90 days of manuscript acceptance. Other output types are not subject to the Open Access policy and are eligible for submission by default.

The next REF Open Access policy begins 1 January 2026 and until then the REF 2021 OA policy should continue to be followed. This means researchers should continue to deposit their manuscripts of paywalled journal articles or conference papers in PEARL via Pure within 90 days of acceptance.

The author's final accepted manuscript should be deposited. This is also known as a post-print or post-referee but pre-publication version.  Most publishers do not allow the final published version of a paywalled paper to be uploaded to a repository.

Uploaded files should be in PDF format.

If you are publishing Gold Open Access i.e. open access on the publisher's site, you can deposit the final published version when available.

Journals should permit sharing of your manuscript via a repository within 12 months of publication (Panels A&B) or within 18 months of publication (Panels D&C). REF encourage authors to choose journals that support open access and author rights though they do permit publication in any venue by providing a number of exceptions to the policy. You can use the JISC Open Policy Finder tool to see if your journal complies with the requirements for your panel for REF. This tool can also identify if a journal complies with your funder requirements.

However, the Library team will check each deposit for REF compliance and apply any necessary exceptions permitted by the policy so authors are asked to deposit manuscripts, add the acceptance date and the Library will undertake all other actions.

The acceptance date is usually the date upon which you are informed that an item has been accepted for publication, whether this is by email, phone or otherwise. Some publications give authors an 'official' acceptance date, which we recommend using if you know it.

What if I haven't got the manuscript?

Publishers will retain a copy in their systems and in some cases it is possible to contact them or log into the author submission system and retrieve this.

In situations where Plymouth staff are collaborating authors and only the lead or corresponding author retains a copy of the manuscript, we have drafted the below email template that staff may wish to adapt and send to the lead author to aid with requesting a copy for deposit.

If this scenario causes a delay in obtaining the manuscript, be reassured that we can record an 'exception' under the policy: "The individual whose output is being submitted to the REF experienced a delay in securing the final peer-reviewed text (for instance, where a paper has multiple authors).” The delay should be 'reasonable' as per this scenario.

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TEMPLATE DRAFT OF AN EMAIL TO SEND TO LEAD/CORRESPONDING AUTHORS (to assist in tracking down the accepted manuscript required for REF deposit]

RE: [Article Title] – The Accepted Manuscript

Dear….

I am required to deposit the accepted manuscript version of our co-authored paper to ensure eligibility for entering the work into a future UK Research Excellence Framework (REF) exercise.  As the corresponding author with access to the manuscript, I’d be grateful if you could forward me a copy of our Accepted Manuscript i.e. pre-published, post-referee paper (ideally in Word format). Please note that a PDF prepared by the publisher is not suitable for this purpose.

I will deposit the manuscript into the university’s institutional repository, Pearl, in a way that complies with the journal’s policy on copyright and embargoes, self-archiving and author rights.  PEARL is accessible to external search engines ensuring that the paper's visibility will be maximised.

I would appreciate if you could send me a copy of the paper as described above as soon as possible.

If you have any questions about making the article available in this way please let me know or contact my institution's open access publishing advice team: openresearch@plymouth.ac.uk 

Yours sincerely….

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While the item may technically be compliant, the University encourages our researcher to deposit, even if the lead author has the intention of depositing in their own repository. Taking responsibility for your own deposit ensures that the file is deposited in the correct time frame to be included in REF. In addition, it ensures that our research is more discoverable for increased citation impact and furthers the creation of an open research environment at the University.

If your article is going to be published Open Access via an Open or Hybrid Journal under a CC-BY licence (not any other type of CC licence) you should deposit the publisher pdf when available in order to maximise reach and visibility of your publication as repositories are harvested by many external tools increasing the likelihood of broader citation impact. The University can also preserve these outputs for the future. These outputs require no further action for REF OA compliance

Please note that some journals describe their content as 'open', where the journal provides free access to resources but the publisher retains the copyright and prevents download and distribution of the files or where download and distribution are only allowed for a period of time. In this case, the article is generally not accepted as 'Open Access' under the REF and most funder requirements.

If you are uncertain about whether a publication is 'open' or not, please contact your Information Specialist who will be able to advise. If you have any uncertainties around the type of Open Access your paper will be published as, it would be safer for REF compliance to deposit the Accepted Manuscript within 90 days of acceptance.

The university's Open Access policy requires all outputs to be deposited in Pearl where legally appropriate. For the purposes of REF submission returns, versions of articles should be deposited in Pearl for compliance reasons.

This does not prevent authors from depositing elsewhere too e.g. there are many subject repositories backed by funders or disciplines. A subject repository may be Arxiv, NORA, CogPrints, Europe PubMed Central or similar.

PEARL is harvested by a number of other tools including Google Scholar; enhancing the 'findability' of your work. It is also a university system that will store, curate and manage research outputs for the future. Subject repositories also consider these issues.

Tools such as ResearchGate are ideal for sharing and making connections but do not offer the security of long term curation that dedicated repositories can offer.

A note about ResearchGate: ResearchGate is not compliant for the purposes of the REF although if you are keen to use it, there is no reason not to deposit there in addition to PEARL in order to further disseminate your work. Note that ResearchGate is subject to the same Green restrictions as PEARL and subject repositories e.g. embargos and versions. Publishers can enforce take downs if incorrect versions are uploaded. The small print on ResearchGate advises authors to 'self archive' rather than 'upload your document' - this subtle difference places the onus on authors to upload versions that adhere to publisher polices for Green Open Access (use JISC's Open Policy Finder as your guide to determine what and where you can make available via the Green route).

The university Open Access Policy states, "This policy applies to all research active staff of the University of Plymouth and covers all published University affiliated research outputs." Therefore, if you are affiliated with the University of Plymouth and have published a manuscript, the university expects deposit of the author's accepted manuscript into PEARL using Pure within 90 days of acceptance, regardless of intention to submit the item for the REF.

For guidance on how to deposit, please see the relevant lib-guide page or contact your Information Specialist.

Uploads from previous institutions are not required. Staff can import publication records though to their UoP Researcher Profiles using Pure (Scopus IDs and ORCiD). Utilising an online ID, such as ORCID ID which all researchers at the university should create, can help researchers to keep track of their publications and associated research activity, such as funding/grant information, as they move across institutions. For information on online identifiers and assistance with creating an ORCID ID, please see the Researcher Support pages, or contact your contact your Information Specialist.