The much awaited Contributions to Knowledge and Understanding (CKU) guidance for REF 2029 is out, and finally higher education institutions know how the next REF will work for the outputs component of the assessment. Or do they?
Two of us have written previously about the so-called portability issue, where if a researcher moves to a new institution, it is the new institution to which the research outputs are credited and potentially future REF-derived funding flows.
We and others have argued that this portability supports the mobility of staff at the beginning of their careers and the mobility of staff that are facing redundancy. We believe that this is an important principle, which should be protected in the design of the current REF. If we believe that the higher education system should nurture talent, then the incentive structure underpinning the REF should align with this principle.
We maintain that the research, its excellence, and the integrity with which it is performed depends upon the people that undertake it. Therefore, we continue to support some degree of portability as per REF 2021, acknowledging that the situation is complex and that this support of individual careers can come at the expense of the decoupling and the emerging focus on institutions. The exceptions delineated around “longform and/or long process outputs” in the CKU guidance are welcome – the devil will lie in the detail.
Who the return represents
Leaving aside portability, the decoupling of outputs from individuals has also resulted in a risk to the diversity of the return, especially in subject areas where the total number of eligible outputs is very high.
In previous REF exercises the rules were such that the number of outputs any one researcher could return to the department/unit’s submission was restricted (four in REF 2014 and five in REF 2021). This restriction ensured that each unit’s return comprised a diversity of authors, a diversity of subdisciplines and diversity of emerging ideas.
We recognise that one could argue the REF is an excellence framework, not a diversity framework. However – like many – we believe that REF also has a role to play in supporting the inclusive research community we all wish to champion. REF is also about a diversity – of approaches, of methodologies, of research areas – research needs diversity to ensure the effective teams are in place to deliver on the research questions. What would the impact be on research strategies if individual units increasingly are dominated by a small number of authors?
How the system plays out
Of course, the lack of restriction on output numbers does not preclude units from creating a diverse return. However, especially in this time of sector-wide financial pressures, those in charge of a submission may feel they have no option other than to select outputs to maximise the unit score and hence future funding.
This unbounded selection process will likely lead to intra-unit discord. Even in an ideal case will result in the focus being on outputs covering a subset of hot topics, or worse, subset of perceived high-quality journals. The unintended consequence of this focus could place undue importance on the large research groups led by previously labelled “research stars”. For large HEIs with large units including several of these “stars”, the unit return might still appear superficially diverse, but the underlying return might be remarkably narrow.
While respecting fully the contribution made by these traditional leaders, we think the health of our research future critically depends upon the championing of the next and diverse generation of researchers and their ideas too. We maintain the limits imposed in previous exercises did this, even if that was not their primary intent.
Some might, for a myriad of reasons, think that our concerns are misplaced. The publication of the guidance suggest that we have not managed to land these important points around diversity and fairness.
However, we are sure that many of those who have these views wish to see a diverse REF return too. If we have not persuaded Research England and the other funding councils to reimpose output limits, we urge them at least to ensure that the data is collected as part of the process such that the impact upon the diversity of this unrestricted return can be monitored and hence that future REF exercises can be appropriately informed. This will then allow DSIT and institutions to consider whether the REF process needs to be adjusted in future.
Our people, their excellence and their diversity, we would argue, matter.
