David Willetts assesses the progress made by this year’s Research Excellence Framework
When I assessed the outcome of the last Research Excellence Framework in these pages back in 2014, I said that it was the research community’s equivalent of a general election. The REF certainly matters. And this time round, it has been an even more ambitious exercise than before, assessing 185,000 outputs with 6,700 case studies from 76,000 full-time-equivalent researchers across 157 universities.
There have been several changes from last time as a result of the proposals from the independent Stern review on how to make the exercise more efficient. In particular, there has been a shift from four papers per researcher to a range of between one and five, averaging 2.5. This important reform has given more flexibility to the system. It has also enabled universities to focus even more on their highest-quality research. That may help explain the increase in 4* research compared with last time. Some 84 per cent of all the assessed research has been graded 4* or 3*. It is an exceptional achievement.
The REF results came out on the same day that the Office for Students warned of inflation in the number of first-class degrees awarded. It is a tribute to the community’s confidence in the rigour of the REF process that any such concerns about the REF are more muted. There is, moreover, important independent evidence reinforcing the REF results. The latest Elsevier data suggest that the UK share in the 1 per cent of most highly cited papers is actually going up, which is a remarkable achievement. Together with the REF, this does suggest we have a research base of extraordinarily high quality; it is one of our great national assets.
Interest in place
My article back in 2014 suggested that the main challenge that would need to be tackled for next time was more sensitivity on place. Since then, there has indeed been a surge of interest in levelling up and there is evidence of progress in this week’s results.
The golden triangle of London, Oxford and Cambridge does of course continue to perform very well, but the balance has shifted somewhat towards the rest of the UK, with a stronger rise in performance there.
Three-quarters of universities have over 15 per cent of their research world-leading, while just about all UK universities have some world-leading research. This suggests it might be possible to square the circle and that the pursuit of excellence wherever it is found could of itself yield some shift in the geographical balance of funding.
Monoculture, impact and inclusiveness
My concern about the REF has always been the danger of a monoculture in which 3* and 4* research excellence becomes the be-all and end-all. Other types of research can also be valuable in distinctive ways. Applied research may not be advancing the boundaries of a discipline but it can turn those findings into innovations of value for public services or indeed for business. That is a strength of some of our less prestigious universities. No single metric can capture the diverse missions of different universities, and we still face the challenge of getting that message across.
Assessment of impact was very controversial last time, but it was only ever going to be a selective analysis of some submissions. The anxieties about it appear to have diminished: it now appears to be more accepted as a valuable part of the process. And this is an area where there has been a big improvement from last time, with much more detailed and robust evidence of impact in the submissions. In 2014, I argued that the humanities in particular should not see impact as a threat, as there were few more potent forms of impact than an artistic event drawing on a research programme. That argument remains true.
Another challenge is inclusiveness, and again the news is good. Early career researchers have done well and so has research from staff who took family-related leave. In 2014, we had to battle to get proper recognition for maternity leave. So there has been progress, but there is still more to do.
Another area with more to do is that of interdisciplinary research. UK Research and Innovation is shifting its funding towards more interdisciplinary research but one of the barriers has always been that the classic processes of peer review and the REF are oriented around a more individualistic model of a single researcher in a single well-defined discipline. The subpanels have tried to ensure interdisciplinary research is assessed equitably, but there were still considerable variations in the way submissions identified such research.
Valuable resource
These REF reports are a valuable resource that has not been sufficiently used. There is a lot of interest at the Office for Science and Technology Strategy in better understanding the UK’s comparative advantage, and these reviews are a tool to do that. They are not just a tool for universities deciding where to allocate funding but also for policymakers, metro mayors and even international investors to see more clearly what and where our strengths are. More data to help with this will be going up on the REF website next month.
There is one final observation about this REF. It will be the last for David Sweeney, executive chair of Research England. He will have led the research funding team at the Higher Education Funding Council for England and then UK Research and Innovation for 14 years. He, his colleague Steven Hill and the wider team have done an excellent job. He is a powerful character with strong opinions, but he always really cared about the good of university-based research. We will all miss him.
David Willetts is a visiting professor at King’s College London and a member of the board of UK Research and Innovation. His book A University Education is published by Oxford University Press and was almost eligible for submission to the REF.