There’s a new report published which brings together the findings of a HEFCE-commissioned consultation of stakeholders on a new service, SHERPA/REF. The aim of this new service is to help researchers and institutions to quickly work out if their preferred journal meets REF2020 requirement. SHERPA/REF will also tell them what to do when it does comply, and also, importantly, when it doesn’t. This new service will be located alongside the other SHERPA services (FACT, JULIET and RoMEO).

The consultation identified stakeholder requirements and these have now been used in the development of SHERPA/REF. There was strong demand for the new service as stakeholders estimated they spent on average 30-60 minutes checking compliance for each article they want to publish. They also stated that SHERPA/REF must be up-to-date, accurate and contain information on what to do if a journal is non-compliant or where compliance is uncertain. All the tools they need to check compliance should be in one place contained – the SHERPA services on the SHERPA website. It was noted that SHERPA/REF has been developed but is not yet available.