The culmination of five years’ work, hundreds of meetings and thousands of assessed Outputs was celebrated yesterday (30 March) when the University submitted its REF return.
Almost 200 people attended an online submission ceremony and witnessed Professor Mark Spearing, Vice President (Research and Enterprise), hit the ‘declare and submit’ button on Research England’s REF Submission web page.
Welcoming everyone to the virtual gathering, Professor Spearing said: “There is a lot going on at the moment, but, particularly in this time of COVID, it is really important to celebrate this moment. This marks the culmination of many people’s work across the University over several years.”
He outlined a few REF 2021 facts:
- The University submitted 1,413 staff to the REF, 200 more than in REF 2014
- 7,300 Outputs have been assessed, and 3,229 submitted
- Each of the 104 Impact Case Studies has been read at least 10 times
- Our Environment Statements, of which there are 25, total more than 250,000 words
- Our submission would run over 5,000 A4 pages if printed
Thanking everyone involved, Professor Spearing added: “Our REF submission is a really massive team effort. We should remember that research is very much a whole institution activity.”
Professor Nicky Marsh, Associate Dean for Research and Enterprise in the Faculty of Arts and Humanities, introduced Ella Frears, Poet-in-Residence for the John Hansard Gallery, who read a poem she has written about the REF called The Submission.
Peter Staniczenko, Head of Research Performance in RIS, reflected on the submission process. He said: “We have seen our 25 UOA submissions take shape year-by-year through the annual benchmarking exercises for Outputs; the expert reviews for Impact and Environment; the honing of the hundred words; the optimisation of outputs, gender and former staff through Professor Fliege’s fantastic model; and countless tracked-changes and rewritten scripts, that together have produced an excellent outcome – all 5,000 pages. It will be another year before we discover just how well we’ve done, but I’m confident it’s going to be a result we can all be proud of.”
