Impact has in the past two REF cycles established itself as an integral criteria of research assessment in the UK. However, the kinds of impacts that are valued and the ways in which the ‘reach’ and ‘significance’ of impact are interpreted by instituti…
Category: REF2021
Stratification, Centralisation and the REF – The changing face of the UK university workforce
Drawing on an analysis of HESA and case study data, Andrew Jenkins and Alison Wolf, explore the changing composition of the workforce in the UK higher education sector. Trends towards increased professionalisation and centralisation of roles, as well a…
Do we need all the components of the Research Excellence Framework?
The Research Excellence Framework (REF) is underpinned by three areas of assessment: outputs, impact and environment. However, discussing the findings of their recent research Mehmet Pinar and Tim Horne argue that these elements correlate to the extent…
We read 70 impact strategies from across the globe – we found only two different strategies.
Reporting on their recent international survey of impact strategies, Mark Reed and Saskia Gent discuss their findings, identify two main types of impact strategy and analyse six key themes that comprise the current sector standard for good impact strat…
Online Impact – Surveying the websites most commonly cited in impact case studies
Reporting on their recent survey of websites cited in REF 2014 impact case studies, Kayvan Kousha, Mike Thelwall and Mahshid Abdoli, discuss which websites are most commonly used as supporting evidence for impact and how these vary across academic disc…
What does COVID-19 mean for the evaluation of the Impact criterion in REF2021?
The concept of research impact represents, to a degree, a formal way of understanding the productive relationships forged between academic research and the wider world. Unsurprisingly, these relationships took on entirely new dimensions as the COVID-19…
Impact Monoculture – Are all impact case studies the same old story?
The impact of quantitative research measures on academic behaviours have been widely discussed, but the impact of qualitative assessment regimes is more often thought of as benign. Drawing on an analysis of impact case studies submitted to REF 2014, Ju…
The impact agenda in four acts – Or, how impact moved from concept to governing principle
The term ‘impact’ has become so familiar that it is easy to forget how much effort was invested in embedding it in British academia. Marta Natalia Wróblewska takes a look at the emergence of the discourse of impact in the UK and its transfo…
To reduce inequalities in research evaluation, give researchers a universal basic income for research impact
As the review of REF2021 begins, Mark Reed proposes that rather than allocating impact funding to a small number of high performing institutions, funding should be allocated more broadly to individual researchers. He argues that not only would this lim…
Industry not harvest: Principles to minimise collateral damage in impact assessment at scale
The recent institutional submissions and conclusion of the first phase of the REF, coupled with the announcement of a wide-ranging review of research assessment in the UK, has provided space for renewed thinking on the state of research assessment. In …