Research Excellence Framework (REF 2029)

The UK Joint Funding Bodies have now released further details of the upcoming research evaluation exercise. The headline is a timing extension for the next REF exercise.

The next REF exercise will be REF 2029, with results published in December 2029. REF will provide an updated timeline as soon as possible. They do not include REF’s work on people, culture, and environment. REF expect to provide more information on people, culture, and environment in January 2024.

The newly released information provided covers:

Breaking the link between individual staff members and unit submissions, including removing minimum and maximum outputs that can be submitted from specific individuals. The underlying principle outlined in the Initial Decisions will be maintained, however further work is needed to ensure the balance of benefit and the minimisation of unintended consequences.
Institutions may submit any output where there is a demonstrable and substantive link to the submitting institution within the REF period. Further work is needed to develop our guidance on how institutions provide evidence of demonstrable and substantive links.
The proposal for co-authored outputs outlined in Initial Decisions is confirmed. Outputs sole-authored by PGR students, including PhD theses, will not be eligible for submission, nor will those produced by individuals employed on contracts with no research-related expectations.
The overall Unit of Assessment structure will remain unchanged from REF2021.
There will be no fundamental changes to the proposed measure to account for the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic.
The minimum number of Impact Case Studies that an institution can submit per disciplinary submission will be reduced to one, and the removal of the 2* quality threshold is confirmed. Proposals related to the revision of the thresholds for the number of Impact Case Studies that are required to be submitted, and the weighting of the structured statement will be considered further.