REF 2028 is not going to look like REF 2021.
The reception so far has been largely positive, but some misgivings about unintended consequences have also emerged. As ever, the devil will be in the detail.
This exercise will finally break the link between individual researchers and REF, completing a movement that has been under way over successive assessment exercises. Institutions will no longer submit individual members of staff, and there will be no census date. There will be no minimum or maximum output requirement, which means that the need for an individual staff circumstances process will vanish. This was a difficult and onerous aspect of REF 2021, and its disappearance will be a relief.
The emphasis on the assessment of a wider research culture, rather than measurements of productivity, reflects a long-overdue acknowledgement that assessment affects behaviour, and that it may be used as a means to influence research environments for the better. This is welcome. But the implications for staff who for a variety of reasons have found their research productivity to be constrained over the course of the assessment cycle will have to be carefully managed. Is there a danger that they will fade to the margins as departments plan their submissions? And will the disappearance of the limit on the number of outputs that may be submitted mean that departments try to employ stars with large numbers of strong outputs to boost their profiles?
