REF2021 update 2 - What is an eligible output (paper)? And some interesting new guidance!
5 February 2019
Professor Jodi Lindsay
Dear colleagues,
Last Thursday the final guidance for REF2021 was released, including an update about the number of co-authors allowed on a paper (output) before you need to demonstrate your substantial contribution to the paper. In REF2014 this number was five or fewer, in the draft guidance for REF2021 in July 2018 it was nine or fewer. But the final guidance is FIFTEEN or fewer authors.
So let’s go through in detail what an eligible paper for REF2021 is.
We’ll cover co-authorship (and author numbers), open access requirements, dates of publication, and numbers of papers that are submitted by each academic staff member.
Co-authorship
1. No additional information is required about the author’s contribution to co-authored papers where either:
· there are 15 authors or fewer; or
· there are more than 15 authors but the submitted member of staff to whom the output is attributed is identified as either lead or corresponding author (regardless of the number of authors).
2. Whether first author, last author, alphabetical or some other order, it is considered that the lead and corresponding authors should be easily identifiable within the submitted output. Provided the submitted member of staff is clearly identifiable within the output as lead or corresponding author, including any instances of where that role may be shared, no additional information is required.
3. For each submitted co-authored output where there are more than 15 authors and where the submitted member of staff is not identified as the lead or corresponding author, SGUL is required to affirm the substantial contribution to the research by the submitted member of staff. This will be done by entering the following statements in SGUL’s REF submission, including at least one element from each of a and b:
a. The author made a substantial contribution either to the conception and design of the study; or to the organisation of the conduct of the study; or to carrying out the study; or to analysis and interpretation of study data.
And
b. The author helped draft the output; or critique the output for important intellectual content.
Where the author contribution has been included in the output acknowledgements, this will take precedence to SGUL’s statement to REF on co-authored outputs. Statements on author contribution will be subject to audit, so we will require you to have a signed letter from the lead author stating your contribution as above.
Open Access
- For outputs accepted for publication before 1 April 2016, no open access requirement.
- For outputs accepted for publication between 1 April 2016 and 31 March 2018, the output must have been deposited within 3 months of the date of publication.
- For outputs accepted from publication after 1 April 2018, the output must have been deposited no later than three months after acceptance.
At SGUL, we deposit papers in SORA through CRIS. Please get into the habit of depositing all of your papers as soon as they have been accepted. It does not matter if they are gold, green, or embargoed for up to 12 months, they must be deposited in SORA through CRIS within 3 months of acceptance. The website is https://cris.sgul.ac.uk/login.html
(It is worth noting that the REF guidance is much more complex than this, but the staff in the library are doing the complex work for you, so please help them out! For queries, contact sora@sgul.ac.uk)
Dates of publication
The paper must have first been available in the public domain between 1 Jan 2014 and 31 Dec 2020.
Note that this is not necessarily the publication date, but the first date that the final version was made available on the journal’s website or in an archive such as bioRxiv.
Numbers of papers submitted by each academic staff member
Every academic staff member eligible for return (see REF2021 update 1 email and/or Code of Practice) will submit at least one paper.
The maximum that any single academic can submit is five.
Each paper will only be submitted by SGUL once.
The total number of papers that SGUL submits will be 2.5 x FTE (full time equivalent staff).
For REF2021, the final publically available website will not list the names of the academics SGUL submits, although the papers will be published.
Hope this was helpful. We’ll be putting these emails on the REF2021 portal page so they are easy to find. If you want to read the full REF2021 guidance it is at https://www.ref.ac.uk/publications/
Any questions, contact me or Yvonne Castle.
In the next REF2021 update, we’ll cover how papers are assessed by the REF panels.
Good luck with your papers!
Best wishes
Jodi
Academic Lead for REF2021