When a researcher produces an output and moves between HEIs, portability determines which institution can submit the output for assessment and receive the resulting long-term quality-related funding.
However, a joint letter by the English Association, the Institute of English Studies, and University English, and subsequent interventions from other subject associations, demonstrate that unaddressed concerns over the portability of research outputs are coming to a head.
In REF 2014, if a researcher moved HEI prior to a census date, then only the destination HEI submitted the output. In 2021, to mitigate the potential perceived inflationary transfer market of researchers, the rules were changed so that if researchers transferred, both the original and destination HEIs could return the output. This rightfully recognised the role of both HEIs, having supported the underpinning research and investing in the research of the future respectively.
The initial decisions published in 2023 had research outputs decoupled from the authors with outputs needing to have a “substantive connection” to the submitting institution. Two years on we still don’t know the impact of this decision on portability. One of the unintended consequences of decoupling the outputs from the researchers who authored them and removing the notion of a staff list, is that only the address line of the author affiliation remains. This decoupling means that any notion of portability of outputs with a specific researcher is problematic.
The portability of research outputs is a crucial element of the assessment process. It supports key values such as career security and development, equality, diversity, and inclusion, as well as the financial sustainability of HEIs. More importantly, linking outputs to individual researchers rather than institutions is necessary, particularly in the current Higher Education landscape, to ensure the integrity of both research and the assessment exercise itself. This approach ensures that researchers receive due credit for their work, prevents institutions from unfairly benefiting from outputs produced elsewhere or from structural changes such as departmental closures, and upholds a fairer, more transparent system that reflects actual research contributions.
The sector is in a different place than it was even a few years ago. Many HEIs are financially challenged, with wide-spread redundancies an ongoing reality. Careers are now precarious at every career stage. Making new, or even maintaining, academic appointments is subject to strict financial scrutiny. Across all facets of research – from the medical and engineering sciences to the arts and humanities – the income derived from the REF is essential to the agility of the research landscape.
Whether we like it or not, the decision to hire someone is in part financial. That an early career researcher could be recruited to improve a unit’s (subject) REF submission and hence income is a reality of a financially pressured system. At a different career stage, many distinguished researchers are facing financially imposed redundancy. The agility of the sector to respond is aided by the portability of the researcher’s outputs to allow them to continue their career and their contributions to the sector at a new HEI. The REF derived income is an important aspect of this agility.
Setting aside financial considerations, separating research outputs from the researchers who created them sends a damaging message. It downplays the fundamental role of individuals in driving research and undermines the sense of agency that is crucial to its integrity and rigor.
Auditing the future
As researchers, we recognise the privilege of being supported in pursuing what is often both a passion and a vocation. Decoupling outputs from their creators disregards the individual researcher, their collaborations, and their stakeholders. It also oversimplifies the complex research ecosystem, where researchers work in partnership with their employing institutions, sector bodies, archives, charities, funders, and other key stakeholders.
REF-derived income should not be seen just as a retrospective reward for an HEI’s past support of research, but rather as the nation’s forward-looking investment in the discoveries of tomorrow. To treat it merely as an audit is to overlook its transformative potential. Hence the outputs on which the assessment is based should be both the researchers who contributed to the unit while employed by the university and the researchers who are currently in the unit to contribute to the research that is ongoing, indelibly linking and interweaving past, present and future research.
In addition to concerns over portability, decoupling outputs from the researchers that authored them risks undermining a central premise of the assessment that many of us working to improve our research culture want to see. Decoupling means there is no auditable limit to the number of outputs written by any one individual that can be submitted for assessment. Within the REF, we wish to see outputs authored by a diversity of staff within the unit, staff at different career stages and staff working in different sub areas. By decoupling the author from outputs, a future REF risks undermining the very fairness that the rule change was introduced to ensure.
Not fair not right
Sometimes the unintended consequences of an idea outweigh the benefits it was hoping to achieve. The decoupling of outputs from the researchers that made them possible and the knock-on consequences through restrictions to portability and reduced diversity is one of these occasions.
There has never been a more critical time to uphold fairness in research policy.
If the four funding bodies are to remain agile they must recognise that decoupling research outputs from the individuals who created them is not only harming those facing redundancy but also undermining HEIs’ ability to support the next generation of researchers upon whom our future depends. By the same count, ensuring the portability of outputs is essential for maintaining integrity, protecting careers, and sustaining a dynamic and equitable research environment. The need for change is both urgent and imperative.