April 2019
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This timely conference brought together policymakers and key stakeholders to examine the next steps for the second Research Excellence Framework (REF), currently being developed by the UK higher education funding bodies. It also provided an opportunity to consider the institutional-level environment submission which will take place alongside REF 2021.
Delegates assessed the conclusions of the ‘real time’ review of the framework currently being conducted by Research England, with the pilot study since released, and discussed strategies to ensure that the REF panels promote equality and reflect the diversity of the sector and the academic workforce, which was identified as a priority by the higher education funding bodies.
They also discussed next steps for universities in ensuring that their open access policies are in place for REF 2021, including deposition, reconciling the use of broad standards with the needs of specific disciplinary communities, legal and ethical issues relating to medical research, and the technical barriers to open access.
Attendees also considered how REF can best support interdisciplinary and collaborative research, which was also identified as a key priority by funding bodies - looking at membership, how to tackle the challenges such as the compartmentalisation of research into subject groupings, and dealing with differences in linguistic and social conventions between disciplines.
Further sessions examined the likely effects of the increased weighting of ‘impact’ to 25% and latest thinking on strategies research institutions and individual researchers can employ to maximise the impact of their research, the practical challenges in demonstrating impact, and issues around its measurement across different disciplines.
