So the FRAP outcomes are finally with us and as expected, the next REF is going to bring a greater focus on research culture.
REF2021’s Environment Statements are now REF2028’s People, Culture & Environment (PCE) Statements and the weighting has increased from 15 per cent to 25 per cent. The culture aspect will be assessed at both institution and discipline-level using a yet-to-be-developed “framework relating to research culture that will define core data or evidence requirements, while offering some flexibility for HEIs to tailor submissions to their own circumstances and priorities.”
This approach has largely been welcomed but perhaps predictably, not from all quarters. One of the more vocal detractors has been former Department for Education advisor (and current Director of Research at Policy Exchange) Iain Mansfield, who despaired at the prospect of “outstanding research… being slashed to just 50 per cent of the total score” whilst “running the right EDI schemes [became] fully half as important as actually producing outstanding research.” When folk countered that a positive research culture might actually be a prerequisite to producing more outstanding research, he argued that if this was the case, we’d all being doing it anyway.
He has a point.
It’s quite common to hear of research culture expenditure being justified in terms of the gold-and-glory that will surely result if we only get in there quick enough and spend enough fast enough. But the truth is that developing positive research cultures is not about short-term competitive advantage but about the long-term health of the sector. Research culture is a hygiene factor. We need to set the standard below which we must not fall, rather than making research culture the next big competition in Higher Education. It’s about stemming the loss: the loss of good people (through lack of diversity, poor leadership, toxic behaviours, lack of career paths, recognition, and reward) and the loss of quality (through questionable research practices, closed and irreproducible research), and not a short-cut to gain.
