Science minister Patrick Vallance has announced the next Research Excellence Framework (REF) will be paused for three months to review whether its allocation of £2 billion annually in block research funding will support the government’s economic and social missions.

The move is likely to have implications for the exercise’s expanded efforts to measure and reward research culture.

Vallance told vice-chancellors at Universities UK’s annual conference at the University of Exeter on 4 September that the freeze will scrutinise changes announced as initial decisions in June 2023, with some decisions officially confirmed by the REF’s organisers in June.

“The REF promotes excellence; it allows demonstration of what’s happened with they money…It needs to be a credible assessment of quality,” said Vallance, who explained he had agreed the pause with new chief executive of UK Research and Innovation Ian Chapman, and the heads of devolved research funding bodies.

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“We must make sure that we get it right. We must make sure that it does measure the things that we know we want to measure, and it doesn’t get bound down by measuring things that don’t actually impact on what we’re trying to understand,” Vallance continued.

Alluding to new elements of the REF, he continued: “You don’t want this to be more complicated than it has to be, and there must be ways to make sure that we can get this right.”

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The decision to increase the weighting of the “people, culture and environment” (PCE) section from 15 per cent in REF 2021 to 25 per cent in REF 2029, with assessment of outputs reduced from 60 per cent to 50 per cent, is likely to face considerable scrutiny under the review.

The review is likely to cause major disruption across the sector, affecting the recruitment of experts for the REF panels and the selection of some chairs of REF subgroups.

The review will not push back the publication of REF decisions in December 2029 but it is likely to accelerate the timetable of some aspects of the REF, whose results were initially due to be published at the end of 2028 prior to a year-long delay being announced in December 2023.

Changes to those weighting decisions for REF 2029 have been welcomed by some universities but have faced intense criticism from Russell Group university leaders who believe the decision to diminish the importance of outputs assessment undermines the credibility of the exercise and will be politically damaging.

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University leaders have also raised questions about how PCE can be assessed robustly using metrics; pilot studies initiated by Research England and the REF’s other organisers – the devolved research funding bodies for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland – are believed to have disappointed sector figures.

Results of the pilot studies are  but some have questioned how excellence in PCE can be robustly measured, and whether some universities are more disadvantaged to compete on this front than others.

Speaking ahead of his retirement as principal of the University of Glasgow next month, Anton Muscatelli recently told ̽����Ƶ: “If we are worried about research culture, having a good research environment should be a condition of funding. It should become a regulatory issue; does research funding go to those institutions who do not reach certain standards related to research culture?”

“I don’t believe you can score a set of metrics on research culture; what does it mean if an institution gets a 3.2 grade point average (GPA) in the REF on research culture and another one gets a 3.5 GPA? Can we really score research culture and environment in this way and award funding on this basis?” said Muscatelli, a former chair of the Russell Group who has led Glasgow since 2009.

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Muscatelli, who is not attending the UUK conference, has previously called for a pause on the REF while the PCE elements were considered. “If you are going to go there, you should pilot it first. When the REF introduced impact this is what we did but we are much more concerned about PCE than we were about impact.”

jack.grove@timeshighereducation.com