UK REF environment statements at unit level ‘should be scrapped’

Discipline-level environment statements should be dropped from the next Research Excellence Framework in favour of university-level assessment only, an expert panel has recommended.

As part of the latest sector-wide evaluation of UK research, whose results were published in May, almost 2,000 unit-level statements detailing the outcomes, policies and investments of university departments or faculties were submitted to Research England.

Along with figures about research income, doctoral degree completions and an institution-level narrative, these statements accounted for 15 per cent of a university’s score in the 2021 REF, which will be used to allocate about £2 billion a year in funding.

But a report by a panel of UK and international academics commissioned by Research England and other British regional funding bodies has now recommended that the unit-level statements – some of which are up to 30 pages long, and must be reviewed by three to five panellists – should not be part of the next REF.

Instead, the assessment should rely on a more detailed version of the institution-level environment statements, according to the report published on 28 July, which has been “welcomed” by the UK’s four main funding bodies.

That change would reduce the administrative burden for universities and “reduce duplication” in preparing REF submissions, it says, reflecting complaints by the Russell Group of research-intensive universities, which has lobbied for the abolition of the ‘time-consuming” assessments.

However, others have opposed the scrapping of unit-level statements, arguing that research cultures and interactions differ between university departments to the extent that an institution-only statement would result in generalities rendering the exercise meaningless. It would also lower the importance of improving research culture in UK universities, in particular the conditions faced by early career researchers and precarious staff, some argue.

The panel piloted an assessment of the research environment based on institutional-level statements only and found there was “broad alignment observed between the outcomes from the pilot and the average unit-level environment outcomes”.

Chris Day, vice-chancellor of Newcastle University, who chaired the pilot panel, said that the initiative showed the “feasibility and real value of introducing institutional assessment”.

“Assessment at this level has much to offer universities…in reducing the workload involved in producing multiple unit statements, and in supporting a ‘coming together’ across an institution to identify, reflect on and develop the strategies and resources invested in research and delivering impact from it,” added Professor Day.

The report will feed into an international review of the REF, currently being led by New Zealand’s former chief scientist Sir Peter Gluckman, which is likely to inform arrangements for a future exercise.

jack.grove@timeshighereducation.com