REF team says next UK assessment exercise will collect data at contract level
Institutions have been reminded that they will submit outputs, not staff, to the next Research Excellence Framework, meaning there will be no census date for the 2029 exercise.
The decision was confirmed in an overview of initial decisions published by the REF team in June last year, but Research England’s executive chair, Jessica Corner, has written to universities today to update them on tweaks to the changes.
For REF 2029, the volume measure will be calculated using data taken directly from the Higher Education Statistics Agency staff record, removing the need for a census. The data will be based on the number of full-time equivalent staff on contracts with significant responsibility for research.
In a change to the plans announced last year, the next REF will continue to collect data at contract level. Data for academic year 2024-25 will be used as “a pilot year” for REF 2029, a decision the REF team said was made in cooperation with the research community.
“The use of HESA data is a big change and we know it will take time for some institutions to work through the implications of that,” it said in a statement.
In her letter, Corner said that a policy development exercise with “a group of representatives of the community” surfaced “a set of clear recommendations that the REF team is now working to develop into policy”.
“This included a change to the Hesa staff record to gather data relevant to this policy at contract level,” she said. The initial plans would have seen data used at the person level, rather than the contract level.
The change “means that information about SSR (significant responsibility for research), research independence and unit of assessment will be gathered at a contract level,” the letter stated.
Corner said this was deemed to “better meet the requirement for robust and accurate data that best reflects the capacity for research within the sector, without increasing burden for the community”.
“Our ambition is that Hesa data becomes a single trusted source of information about the university research population that will support further uses and analyses beyond REF,” Corner added.
“For Research England, these further uses may include use as the volume measure for funding beyond collection of data specifically for REF purposes.”
Research England coordinates REF activity on behalf of the four UK national funding bodies.
Data quality
Corner said the REF team also has “ambitions to improve the overall quality of data concerning university research in England, and enhanced, up-to-date information about the research population is an important component of those ambitions”.
“This move is part of work to break the link between individuals and the content of submissions and remove potential perverse incentives linked to a REF census date,” she said.
In previous iterations of the REF, there were concerns that institutions might look to recruit so-called “superstar” researchers ahead of the census date, in order to elevate their performance in the assessment exercise.
“While the funding bodies recognise that initial effort will be required by [higher education institutions] to collect data on an annual basis, this change is designed to future-proof the REF and build a system that will become better integrated and less burdensome over time,” Corner said.
“The REF team continues to work closely with Hesa to ensure any changes to the Hesa data collection process and the evolving REF timetable are carefully considered and communicated.”
‘Necessary changes’
The REF team is exploring with Hesa possible mechanisms that would enable universities to make “relevant and necessary changes” to the data collected in the initial years, without detriment, Corner added.
It is also working with a small number of institutions which, due to local employment structures, do not return data on all eligible staff with significant responsibility for research to Hesa, in a bid to ensure that their staff volume can be calculated “robustly”.
A full policy module, including complete details relating to the use of the Hesa Staff Record for the volume measure, will be published in Autumn/Winter 2024.