As published in the Initial Decisions, for REF 2029 institutions will submit outputs, not staff, to the assessment exercise. The funding bodies have highlighted these changes today to vice chancellors and principals. You can see a copy of the circular letter issued by Research England on their website.
Following a working group with the Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA) and volunteers from across the sector, we are setting out some information today on the technical detail and next steps. We will publish the full policy module in autumn/winter 2024.
Summary of changes
The volume measure for REF 2029 will be calculated using data taken directly from the HESA staff record. This data will be based on the FTE of staff on Teaching and Research contracts with significant responsibility for research (SRR) and staff on Research-only contracts who are independent researchers at your institution. The FTE used to calculate the REF 2029 volume measure will be gathered at a contract level.
This is a change to our previously announced position that data would be used at the person level, rather than the contract level and includes a change to the HESA staff record to gather data relevant to this policy at contract level. This means that information about SRR, research independence and Unit of Assessment will be gathered at a contract level.
Background to the Changes
In June 2024 we asked for volunteers from across the sector to take part in a policy development working group with HESA. The working group investigated the details of how to implement the use of HESA data in calculating the volume measures.
We carefully selected the group to ensure we represented the diversity of REF-submitting institutions. We asked applicants to outline the challenges and opportunities they could see in the use of the HESA staff record for the volume measure and these were considered along with a broad range of other elements. These included:
- Expertise: we ensured that the final list of participants included representation from staff with expertise in institutional REF submission processes and staff with expertise in using HESA data and completing HESA returns.
- Institutional characteristics: we invited participants from research-intensive HEIs (9), teaching-intensive HEIs (4), post-92 HEIs (7), affiliated to a range of mission groups (6 different groups, and a number of participants from institutions not aligned to any mission group), as well as small specialist institutions (2).
- Region/ nation: participants were invited from a broad geographic spread, including 3 nations and 8 regions.
We asked any applicants who were not selected to share their comments with us via email. We will consider these alongside the wider discussions from the working group sessions.
This was deemed to better meet the requirement for robust and accurate data that best reflects the capacity for research within the sector.
This recommendation reversed a previous request made by the funding bodies, to gather data relevant to this policy at a person level, rather than a contract level.