The REF’s pursuit of precision is bogus

Proposed changes to who and what are submitted have more to do with institutional vanity than with evaluating UK research, says Jonathan Adams.

In a webinar on 19 July, the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) announced possible policy changes for the submission of staff and outputs to the 2021 Research Excellence Framework (REF). These have been the most contentious issues over many cycles of assessment.

In the 1992 Research Assessment Exercise, assessment of “academic staff paid from general funds” and “four outputs per person” gave a simple, transparent and widely accepted outcome.