Changes to REF 2029

The number of publications to be submitted will be 2.5 times the full-time equivalent number of academics employed in research positions in Law in Oxford in 2025/2026 and 2026/2027 (according to the Higher Education Statistics Agency). We expect that we will be submitting over 300 publications (it is not clear whether the number will be greater than the 345 we submitted in REF 2021); there are already nearly 1000 items in the database of publications that our assessment panel is reviewing according to REF criteria.

The new guidance says that we should ordinarily submit no more than five publications by a single author; there is no minimum. In a ‘statement of representation’ in SPRE, we will need to show that we submitted publications that represent the wide range of people and the full diversity of the research undertaken. We will not be submitting people to the REF, but only publications. Outputs other than journal articles and books are supposed to be welcome. 

Eligible publications

To be eligible for submission, a publication needs to have been made publicly available during the period of employment in Oxford or within a defined period after the author’s employment in Oxford ended (two years for most outputs, and five years for long-form). An exception to this is long-form or long-process outputs published before the author was employed in Oxford, where the employment relationship in Oxford commenced within 5 years of the output first being made publicly available. This exception is intended to facilitate job mobility by making some publications ‘portable’; where we request the exception, a 100-word justification will be required. 

A publication can be double-weighted if its contribution to knowledge and understanding is appropriately substantial. We expect to be applying for double-weighting for all books.

Changes to open access requirements

The REF open access rules have changed. All journal articles and published conference papers published from 1 January 2026 must be either 

• fully open access* immediately upon publication, or​
• deposited for open access via Symplectic Elements within 3 months of publication. 

* Fully open access, also known as “Gold Open Access”, means not only that the text must be freely available and searchable from the first day of publication, but also that it must be accompanied by an appropriate licence (i.e. CC-BY or similar) which ensures the access terms cannot be revoked. 

This means that any journal article which was not deposited within three months of acceptance may still become compliant if it is now deposited within three months of publication in 2026 or later. 

Note that chapters and books do not need to be deposited for open access to be REF-compliant. 

• The 2-star quality threshold for underpinning research has been removed. The research underpinning impact case studies now only needs to meet the REF definition of research. That research may be submitted in REF 2029, or may have been submitted in REF 2021, but this is not a requirement.  
• The underpinning research needs to have been carried out by research staff –the rules exclude research by students, visiting staff, or those staff whose underpinning research was undertaken before employment in Oxford (ie impact is not portable).
• The number of impact case studies to be submitted depends on the number of academics employed; we expect that we will be submitting seven.

The reporting requirements for SPRE are meant to involve some burden reduction, and also to reflect a new focus on research strategy and on support for researchers. An ‘institution-level statement’ will be introduced: an overall statement from the central University that will count for 60% of SPRE. The Law Faculty’s ‘Unit level statement’ (to be assessed separately) will count for 40% of SPRE. 

SPRE will include narrative statements about our publications and about strategy, people, income, infrastructure, facilities, collaboration, engagement and impact. We are starting to build an account of transformations that have been going on in support for research and for researchers in the Faculty since 2021.

• Templates and indicators will be available by the end of 2026.
• The University’s ‘Institution-level statement’ and the Law Faculty’s ‘Unit-level statement’ will each have four sections that have been developed from the UL environment statement in REF 2021:
  • context, mission and strategy;
  • people;
  • income, infrastructure and facilities and
  • collaboration, engagement and impact.
• The Unit-level Statement also has three required elements:
  • the representation statement,
  • the statement on the research community and
  • a statement of the Unit’s approach to Engagement and Impact. These elements will be incorporated into the context, mission and strategy section and the engagement and impact section of the template.
• The Research Community statement will include a Roles and Careers statement, providing an overview of the range of roles, functions, and career stages that contribute to a unit across the REF period. Units are encouraged to celebrate the breadth of research activity, roles, and contributions that support research excellence.
• Culture no longer features in the title of this component, but the importance of culture in supporting a diverse and inclusive research environment and the production of excellent outputs is still important.