HEFCE (REF2020), IR deposit and embargoes

As is now fairly common knowledge, HEFCE expects green deposit on all journal articles to be included in REF2020. EDIT: just to clarify: HEFCE has not finalised its position. This is my expected outcome.

The deposit must be made upon article acceptance and not later.

In the case of embargoes, this should be set in the software. However, I then wondered how we can determine what the embargo period should be. After all, publishers can then take a long time after acceptance to get the piece out and the embargo goes into effect from the time of publication.

I wrote to our repository manager to ask about our procedure at Lincoln and received the following:

1. Deposit the item and set visibility to repo staff only
2. Add note specifying embargo period
3. Notify repo manager at the time of publication

Of course, the easier way would be for HEFCE to specify that the embargo is from acceptance, which would incentivize publishers to get things out a little quicker...

HEFCE (REF2020), IR deposit and embargoes was originally published by Martin Paul Eve at eve.gd: Martin Paul Eve on February 10, 2014.