This is a friendly reminder about open access for University of Portsmouth staff, to make sure you don’t get caught out by HEFCE’s REF eligibility policy.

In order to be eligible for the REF, journal and conference articles accepted for publication after the 1st April 2016 need to be uploaded to Pure.  HEFCE insist that this is done within 3 months of the article being accepted for publication.  In reality, to make sure there’s enough time for the Library to check-in the articles and fix any issues, this needs to be done as soon as they are accepted for publication.

Over the past few months, the Library has been monitoring what’s been coming to Pure.  While most authors are uploading their work, there’s a significant proportion of articles that haven’t been uploaded.  Also, some authors have uploaded their articles after HEFCE’s 3 months deadline.

Unfortunately, this means that some articles are now not eligible for the REF.

To upload your work to Pure –

  • Login to Pure
  • Click the green ‘Add new’ button’ in the top-right.
  • Click Research Output in the left-hand menu.

Or if you are pushed for time, you can email your articles to your faculty depositor as soon as they are accepted for publication and they can upload them for you.

I should also add that while uploading the above mentioned journal and conference articles is essential for REF purposes, it’s also important to upload your other recent publications (i.e anything published from 2014 on wards) into Pure as Pure is also used for PDRs, showcasing work on the Portsmouth Research Portal, and for faculty reporting on research activities.

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact the Research Outputs team in the Library – openaccess@port.ac.uk