The results of the UK’s national Research Excellence Framework (REF) will be made public on Thursday 18 December, by the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE).
Full results will be published on the REF website just after midnight on Thursday morning. We’ll be featuring our own peaks of excellence from REF via our website and here on SUSSED on Thursday as well.
REF is the first major assessment of UK research since 2008, replacing the former Research Assessment Exercise (RAE). Panels of experts across 36 Units of Assessment have conferred over the last year to determine the quality and impact of university research. Three primary elements are assessed: Outputs (weighted as 65% of the total assessment); Impact (20%) and the research Environment (15%).
Our REF submission of 130 impact case studies covers 25 Units of Assessment and features research activity involving over 1,200 eligible researchers from across the University. Nationally, 154 UK universities took part in the REF making over 1,900 submissions featuring nearly 7,000 impact case studies.
The results are presented in the form of quality profiles (for the institution overall and for each submission we made to the Units of Assessment). These profiles show the percentage of research activity (not people) in each submission judged to meet the standard at different quality levels: 4* (world-leading); 3* (internationally excellent); 2* (internationally recognised); 1* rec0gnised nationally
The results from REF2014 will be used by the four UK higher education funding bodies in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland to allocate almost £2bn of research funding per year to UK universities from 2015-16. The RAE 2008 resulted in a current allocation of £31m per annum to the University.
REF also provides accountability for public investment in research, demonstrates its benefits, and provides important reputational yardsticks and benchmarking information about the research performance of UK universities.