Government ‘committed’ to slashing the cost of REF

Research Excellence Framework costs have ‘increased significantly’, says Dsit

The UK government has said it is committed to reversing the increasing financial cost to universities of the Research Excellence Framework.

In its response to the independent review of research bureaucracy, the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology said the REF was a “prominent source of research bureaucracy” that required “special attention”—even though the independent review, published in 2022, did not comment on the exercise.