CASRAI Dictionary

Tag: CKU REF 2029

  • What Is REF 2029? A Plain-English Explainer for New Research Staff

    REF 2029 is the UK’s next Research Excellence Framework exercise — the national, peer-review-based assessment that determines how roughly £2 billion a year in public research funding is allocated to UK universities. Submissions are due in autumn 2028, with results published in December 2029.

    The Research Excellence Framework (REF) is the system the four UK higher education funding bodies use to assess the quality of research produced by UK universities and other higher education providers, and to inform block-grant research funding decisions accordingly.

    What Is REF 2029?

    REF 2029 is the fourth full cycle of the Research Excellence Framework, following REF 2014, REF 2021, and their predecessor, the Research Assessment Exercise. It was originally scheduled as “REF 2028” but was renamed and extended following a December 2023 policy decision, moving the results date back to December 2029.

    Research England manages the exercise on behalf of all four UK higher education funding bodies: Research England (covering England), the Scottish Funding Council, Medr — Wales’ Commission for Tertiary Education and Research — and the Department for the Economy, Northern Ireland. Their shared aim, carried over from previous cycles, is to secure a world-class, dynamic and responsive research base across UK higher education.

    Who Does REF 2029 Apply To?

    REF 2029 applies to every UK higher education provider that receives public research funding and chooses to make a submission. Submissions are organised by discipline into Units of Assessment (UoAs), each reviewed by an expert sub-panel sitting under one of four main panels covering the sciences, engineering, social sciences, and arts and humanities.

    The biggest structural change for first-time submitters: REF 2029 decouples research outputs from named individual staff. Under REF 2021, institutions submitted a set number of outputs per named staff member. Under REF 2029, an institution’s total research volume is calculated automatically from Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA) staff data — specifically, staff recorded as having significant responsibility for research — with outputs required in proportion to that calculated volume rather than tied to individually listed academics.

    What Does REF 2029 Assess?

    REF 2029 assesses research quality through three weighted elements. Each Unit of Assessment receives a profile combining scores across all three, expressed on the same five-point scale used since REF 2014 (4* world-leading down to unclassified).

    Assessment element What it covers Weighting
    Contribution to Knowledge and Understanding (CKU) Peer review of submitted research outputs (publications, datasets, practice-based outputs) and a unit-level disciplinary statement 55%
    Engagement and Impact (E&I) Impact case studies describing effects on the economy, society, culture, public policy, health or quality of life beyond academia 25%
    Strategy, People and Research Environment (SPRE) Institution- and unit-level statements on research culture, people strategies, and research infrastructure 20%

    SPRE — renamed from the originally proposed “People, Culture and Environment” (PCE) element — is scored 60% at institutional level and 40% at unit level, meaning an institution’s overall research infrastructure carries more weight than any single department’s environment.

    How Does REF 2029 Differ From REF 2021?

    REF 2029 keeps the same three-part structure as REF 2021 but rebalances the weightings and changes how submissions are built. The table below compares the two exercises directly.

    Feature REF 2021 REF 2029
    Outputs element weighting Outputs: 60% CKU: 55%
    Impact element weighting Impact: 25% Engagement and Impact: 25%
    Environment element weighting Environment: 15% Strategy, People and Research Environment: 20%
    Staff submission model Named individual staff, fixed outputs per person Decoupled; HESA-derived research volume, no fixed per-person minimum
    Output portability Output counted for both institutions if a researcher moved Tied to the employing institution by default, with a five-year portability concession for long-form outputs

    An important, under-reported fact for anyone new to REF: the REF 2029 criteria-setting process was formally paused in autumn 2025 after sector concern about the original PCE proposals, and the current weightings above were only confirmed in winter 2025 once the pause was lifted. Guidance published before that point should be treated as superseded.

    What Is the REF 2029 Timetable?

    The REF 2029 project timetable, maintained by Research England and last updated 10 December 2025, sets out the milestones below. Institutions preparing their first submission should track this schedule directly, since dates for the census and output periods are refined as guidance is finalised.

    Milestone Timing
    REF renamed from “REF 2028” to “REF 2029”; extension confirmed Winter 2023
    Full expert panel membership announced Summer/Autumn 2025
    REF 2029 criteria-setting paused Autumn 2025
    Weightings confirmed; SPRE and Engagement and Impact guidance published Winter 2025
    Final guidance on submissions and panel criteria published Autumn 2026
    Survey of submission intentions Spring–Summer 2027
    Submission window opens Autumn 2027
    Submission deadline; assessment phase begins Autumn 2028
    Results published December 2029

    Common Questions About REF 2029

    Is it REF 2028 or REF 2029?

    It is REF 2029. The exercise was originally planned as “REF 2028” but Research England announced an extension in December 2023 following consultation, renaming it REF 2029 and moving the results date to December 2029, with submissions due in autumn 2028.

    What Are the Changes in REF 2029?

    The three headline changes are: decoupling of outputs from named individual staff in favour of a HESA-derived research volume measure; a rebalanced weighting toward outputs (CKU 55%) and research environment (SPRE 20%); and a five-year portability concession for long-form outputs when researchers move institution.

    What Is the REF 2029 Definition of Impact?

    REF’s definition of impact, carried forward into REF 2029’s Engagement and Impact element, is an effect on, change to, or benefit for the economy, society, culture, public policy, services, health, the environment, or quality of life, occurring beyond academia. It is evidenced through impact case studies at Unit of Assessment level.

    What Period Does REF 2029 Cover?

    REF 2029’s submission deadline falls in autumn 2028, with the assessment phase running through 2029 and results published in December 2029. Exact census and output-period start/end dates are confirmed in the REF 2029 guidance’s Section 1 Overview, published on the official REF 2029 site.

    What This Means for First-Time Submitters

    If you are a new research-administration staff member or an early-career researcher encountering REF for the first time, three practical points follow from the above:

    • You will not be individually “submitted” or excluded by name in the way REF 2021 worked — your institution’s HESA-derived staff data determines its overall output requirement, so your contribution matters at unit level rather than through a fixed personal output quota.
    • Impact case studies and disciplinary statements still require accurate, evidenced attribution of who contributed what to a piece of research — this is where standardised contributorship records become operationally useful for REF preparation.
    • Because REF 2029’s criteria were paused and then revised in 2025, always check the publication date on any guidance document against the official REF 2029 timetable before relying on it.

    Where to Find Primary REF 2029 Guidance

    The authoritative source for REF 2029 rules, panel criteria and open-access policy is the official REF 2029 site, maintained by Research England on behalf of the four funding bodies; institution-specific planning pages from individual universities (Reading, Leeds, Oxford, St Andrews and others) are useful secondary summaries but should always be checked against the primary guidance sections. UKRI’s Research England pages provide the policy and funding context that sits above the REF itself.

    For institutions building out their REF submission workflows, clear, standardised contributor attribution is increasingly relevant to both the Engagement and Impact and Contribution to Knowledge and Understanding elements — an area where CRediT-based contributor role taxonomies and broader research administration practice intersect with REF preparation. As REF 2029’s remaining guidance and panel criteria are finalised through 2026 and 2027, first-time submitters should expect further refinement rather than wholesale change to the framework described here.

  • REF 2029 Initial Decisions: What UKRI Confirmed and What’s Still Open for Consultation

    The REF 2029 initial decisions, published in 2023, confirmed decoupled outputs, HESA-based volume measures and no per-researcher output limits. On 10 December 2025, UKRI and Research England locked in revised element weightings and simplified guidance after an autumn pause – but the detailed Panel Criteria and Working Methods remain unpublished until Autumn 2026.

    The Research Excellence Framework (REF) is the UK’s system for assessing the quality and impact of research produced by higher education institutions, with REF 2029 the next exercise in the series and results due for publication in December 2029.

    What did the original REF 2029 Initial Decisions confirm in 2023?

    The four UK higher education funding bodies published Research Excellence Framework 2029: initial decisions and issues for further consultation (reference REF 2023/01) after reaching agreement through the Future Research Assessment Programme Board. This document set the high-level architecture that everything since has built on.

    Three assessment elements were renamed and reweighted to reflect a broader definition of research excellence: the outputs element became Contribution to Knowledge and Understanding, the environment element became People, Culture and Environment, and the impact element became Engagement and Impact. The funding bodies also confirmed that REF 2029 would move further away from assessing individuals, replacing staff-linked output counts with a volume measure drawn directly from Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA) staff records.

    • Outputs decoupled from individual researchers under a “substantive link” policy tying outputs to the submitting institution instead.
    • No minimum or maximum number of outputs per individual, intended to widen inclusivity for early-career and returning researchers.
    • Unit-of-assessment structure retained largely as in REF 2021.
    • A short, targeted consultation on specific policy aspects launched immediately, alongside a discrete Open Access policy consultation.

    What changed when REF 2029 resumed after the 2025 pause?

    REF 2029 criteria-setting was paused in autumn 2025, following an announcement by UK Science Minister Lord Vallance that final guidance and Panel Criteria and Working Methods would not proceed to publication on the original schedule. On 10 December 2025, the REF team and the four funding bodies published updates confirming the exercise had resumed, shaped by further engagement with the sector and the expert REF panels.

    The People, Culture and Environment element was renamed again, to Strategy, People and Research Environment (SPRE), building on the REF 2021 Environment component and informed by the People, Culture and Environment Pilot report published the same day. Several simplifications were confirmed to reduce burden on institutions:

    • Contribution to Knowledge and Understanding (CKU) guidance simplified and clarified, with unit-level statements removed.
    • A recommended maximum of five outputs per researcher reinstated for clarity, while the minimum of one stays removed.
    • Impact case study requirements reduced to one for the smallest units, and the 2* qualifying threshold for underpinning research removed.
    • Limited portability introduced for long-form and extended-process research outputs, alongside simplified substantive-link requirements.

    Crucially, the funding bodies decided there would be no formal consultation on the guidance or the Panel Criteria and Working Methods, in order to protect the original timetable. REF 2029 panels began meeting in early 2026 to set criteria, and an Institutional-Level Working Group for SPRE is being established.

    How do the confirmed REF 2029 weightings compare at each stage?

    The element weightings moved between the 2023 Initial Decisions and the December 2025 update, reflecting sector feedback and the results of the PCE Pilot. Research England’s own framing is definitive: the funding bodies “refined these weightings having listened to the sector and considered the results of the PCE Pilot.”

    Element 2023 Initial Decisions weighting Confirmed 10 Dec 2025 weighting
    Strategy, People and Research Environment (formerly People, Culture and Environment) 25% 20%
    Contribution to Knowledge and Understanding 50% 55%
    Engagement and Impact 25% 25% (unchanged)

    REF underpins the allocation of roughly £2 billion annually in UK research funding, according to the REF team’s December 2025 announcement, which is why the funding bodies have prioritised timetable stability over a further round of formal consultation on these revised figures.

    Which REF 2029 questions remain open ahead of criteria publication?

    Despite the pace of confirmations through December 2025, the granular assessment criteria that panels and institutions ultimately submit against are not yet public. Per the REF 2029 timetable (last updated 10 December 2025), the sector is currently in the “onboarding of sub-panels” and “expert panels meet to develop guidance” phase covering winter, spring and summer 2026.

    • Panel Criteria and Working Methods – the unit-of-assessment-level detail institutions need for submission planning – is scheduled for Autumn 2026, not before.
    • The Institutional-Level Working Group for SPRE has not yet reported; its recommendations will shape how the 20%-weighted element is actually assessed.
    • The special requests process for exceptional submission circumstances launches only in the 2026-2027 winter window.
    • A long-form-output open access mandate was explicitly ruled out for REF 2029 itself but remains under discussion for the exercise that follows it.
    • Because the funding bodies opted out of formal consultation on the guidance and Panel Criteria and Working Methods, sector input on these final documents will run through panel and steering-group engagement rather than a published open call for responses.

    Answer-first Q&A on REF 2029

    What are the key changes for REF 2029?

    REF 2029 renames and reweights the three assessment elements, decouples outputs from named individuals under a substantive-link policy, replaces staff-linked output counts with a HESA-derived volume measure, and removes per-researcher output minimums while reinstating a recommended maximum of five outputs.

    What is the REF 2029 process?

    Institutions build submissions against Contribution to Knowledge and Understanding, Strategy, People and Research Environment, and Engagement and Impact, following Panel Criteria and Working Methods due in Autumn 2026. The submission window opens autumn 2027, closes autumn 2028, with results published December 2029.

    How many impact case studies are required for REF 2029?

    The December 2025 update reduced the impact case study requirement to a minimum of one for the smallest submitting units, retaining the REF 2021-style approach otherwise, and removed the 2* qualifying threshold previously applied to underpinning research.

    What publications are eligible for REF 2029?

    Outputs are eligible where they have a demonstrable substantive link to the submitting institution during the REF period, rather than being tied to a named individual’s employment dates, with simplified requirements and limited portability for long-form and extended-process research outputs.

    What the REF 2029 timeline means for institutions

    Research administrators cannot yet finalise submission strategy against unit-of-assessment-level criteria that do not exist in published form. What institutions can act on now are the settled structural decisions: the HESA-based volume measure, the substantive-link output policy, the five-output guideline, and the confirmed 20/55/25 weighting split.

    Because no formal consultation will precede the Autumn 2026 Final Guidance, the practical channel for institutional input is direct engagement with REF panels and the Institutional-Level Working Group for SPRE, not a published response process. This is a materially different sector-engagement model from the 2023-2024 Initial Decisions consultation and the 2024 Open Access consultation, both of which invited written responses.

    These structural questions sit alongside, but are distinct from, contributorship and authorship-attribution debates addressed by frameworks such as the authorship standards used elsewhere in scholarly communication, and the broader discipline of research administration that REF submission planning falls under.

    Outlook: REF 2029 heading toward Autumn 2026 Final Guidance

    REF 2029 has moved from broad principle to confirmed structure faster than its criteria have moved to publishable detail. The Initial Decisions set direction in 2023; the December 2025 update, following the 2025 pause, fixed weightings and simplified several requirements. What remains – the Panel Criteria and Working Methods – is the document institutions actually need to plan submissions, and it will not arrive before Autumn 2026. Until then, “REF 2029 initial decisions” describes a settled foundation, not a finished rulebook.

  • Research Excellence Framework 2029: SPRE Explained

    The Research Excellence Framework 2029 replaces the old institution-level and unit-level Environment statements with a single Strategy, People, and Research Environment (SPRE) element, worth 20% of the overall quality profile, in which a new institutional-level statement (ILS) — not a unit-level narrative — now carries 60% of the score. This marks the most significant structural change to how UK higher education institutions report research culture since REF 2021, shifting accountability for a supportive research environment from individual departments to institutional leadership.

    The Research Excellence Framework 2029 (REF 2029) is the UK’s next national exercise for assessing the quality of research at higher education institutions (HEIs), run jointly by Research England, the Scottish Funding Council, Medr (Wales) and the Department for the Economy, Northern Ireland, with results due in December 2029 following submissions in autumn 2028.

    What is REF 2029’s Strategy, People and Research Environment (SPRE) statement?

    The Strategy, People, and Research Environment (SPRE) element is the REF 2029 assessment component that evolved directly from the REF 2021 Environment statements, known then as REF5a (institution-level) and REF5b (unit-level). According to REF 2029 guidance published 10 December 2025, the funding bodies renamed the element after concluding the People, Culture and Environment (PCE) pilot, a project led by Technopolis and CRAC-Vitae that trialled culture-and-environment indicators across a representative sample of institutions and units of assessment.

    The rename signals a genuine shift in emphasis, not just cosmetic rebranding. Where REF 2021’s environment template centred on describing existing infrastructure and past activity, SPRE explicitly foregrounds institutional strategy — the “active way institutions respond to their potentially challenging operating contexts,” in the funding bodies’ own words — as the driver of research culture outcomes, alongside the people and environment factors carried over from 2021.

    How is SPRE scored across institution and unit level?

    SPRE will account for 20% of the overall unit quality profile in REF 2029 — comparable in scale to the 15% weighting the Environment element held in REF 2021, though the assessment mechanics have changed considerably. Within that 20%, scoring is now split between two separately reported statements, weighted to reflect institutional versus departmental responsibility for research culture:

    Statement Weight within SPRE Effective share of overall unit profile Assessed by
    Institution-level statement (ILS) 60% 12% Sub-panels, informed by IL working group
    Unit-level statement (ULS) 40% 8% Sub-panels directly

    Both statements are assessed against the same two criteria used for Environment in REF 2021 — vitality and sustainability. Notably, the funding bodies decided against adding a third “rigour” criterion despite piloting it during the PCE exercise; panels found reflective-practice narratives valuable but not straightforward to measure robustly, so continuous-improvement evidence is recognised within the existing criteria rather than scored separately.

    What must the institutional-level statement (ILS) cover?

    Both the ILS and the unit-level statement (ULS) are built around four common sections, unchanged in structure from the REF 2021 template but now applied consistently at both levels:

    • Context, mission and strategy
    • People
    • Income, infrastructure and facilities
    • Collaboration, engagement and impact

    Word limits are flexible across the four sections rather than fixed per section, and the ILS word allowance is anticipated to be fixed regardless of institution size, while the ULS allowance will be smaller with an extra allowance for larger units. The ILS covers the period 1 August 2020 to 31 July 2028 and, once submitted, is shared with sub-panels so it can inform their assessment of the corresponding ULS — meaning institutions no longer control research-culture narrative in isolation at unit level.

    Two entirely new requirements sit inside the ULS: a Statement of Representation, justifying how submitted outputs reflect the unit’s full range of research activity, and a Statement on the Research Community: Roles and Careers, describing the composition of everyone contributing to a unit’s research — not only those counted in the volume measure, but research technical professionals, engagement and impact staff, research managers and librarians. This broadened definition of “who counts” as a research contributor echoes the logic behind the CRediT contributor role taxonomy, which CASRAI originated in 2014 to formally recognise the full range of contributor roles beyond conventional authorship credit; the standard is now stewarded by NISO as ANSI/NISO Z39.104-2022. Institutions building their roles-and-careers narratives may find that existing CRediT role definitions offer a ready-made vocabulary for describing research-team composition.

    Two dedicated advisory panels will inform assessment of the “People” section specifically: the People and Diversity Advisory Panel (PDAP) and the Research Diversity Advisory Panel (RDAP), which will run calibration exercises early in the assessment cycle before advising sub-panels on strengths and concerns.

    REF 2029 SPRE: answer-first Q&A

    What is the Research Excellence Framework?

    The Research Excellence Framework is the UK’s system for assessing research quality at higher education institutions, run by Research England, the Scottish Funding Council, Medr and the Department for the Economy, Northern Ireland. Its outcomes shape block-grant research funding allocations and provide public accountability for research investment across UK universities.

    What are the key changes for REF 2029?

    REF 2029 replaces environment statements with the SPRE element, introduces an assessed institution-level statement worth 60% of SPRE, decouples the volume measure from submitted outputs, and adds a Statement of Representation and a research community roles-and-careers statement at unit level. Full templates and indicators are due for confirmation during 2026.

    What does the REF 2029 SPRE statement cover?

    SPRE statements address four sections — context, mission and strategy; people; income, infrastructure and facilities; and collaboration, engagement and impact — at both institution and unit level. Narratives are supported by indicators drawn from a basket confirmed with panels, rather than a fixed metrics table, and are assessed on vitality and sustainability.

    Who is eligible for REF 2029?

    Eligibility turns on whether staff hold “significant responsibility for research” (SRR) under an eligible contract at a submitting UK higher education institution, rather than a simple headcount threshold. REF 2029 guidance sets out institutional codes of practice governing how SRR, research independence and unit assignment are identified and verified.

    What this means for research administrators and institutional leaders

    The practical consequence of SPRE is that research-culture reporting can no longer be delegated entirely to departments. Because the ILS carries 60% of the SPRE score and is shared with sub-panels as context for every ULS they assess, institutional strategy teams — not just unit directors — now own a directly assessed piece of the REF quality profile. Research administrators should expect earlier, more centralised drafting cycles for the ILS, closer coordination between central research offices and units on the new Statement of Representation, and a data-collection burden shift towards documenting institution-wide roles and careers rather than only publication-linked staff.

    Because the final templates, indicators and panel criteria for SPRE are still being finalised through 2026, institutions that begin mapping their existing environment narratives against the four SPRE sections now — and start building the evidence base for “distance travelled” since REF 2021 — will be better placed when detailed panel criteria are published.

  • Excellence in Research for Australia vs REF 2029: How They Compare

    Excellence in Research for Australia (ERA) was Australia’s national research evaluation framework, run by the Australian Research Council in 2010, 2012, 2015 and 2018 — but it was discontinued by the Minister for Education in 2023 and has no active successor yet. The UK’s Research Excellence Framework, by contrast, is entering an active new cycle: REF 2029, with results due in December 2029 and roughly £2 billion a year of block-grant funding riding on the outcome. This piece compares how the two systems were built, evaluated outputs, and what that discontinuity means for institutions and researchers who move between the two countries.

    Excellence in Research for Australia is the discontinued national research evaluation framework the Australian Research Council (ARC) ran across four completed rounds (2010–2018) before the government ended it in 2023, pending a replacement.

    What is Excellence in Research for Australia (ERA)?

    ERA was Australia’s periodic, discipline-by-discipline audit of university research quality. The Australian Research Council ran full assessment rounds in 2010, 2012, 2015 and 2018, using expert review panels and bibliometric indicators to rate research against international benchmarks by field of research (FoR).

    A fifth round was scheduled for 2023, but the ARC postponed it in September 2022 while developing “a more robust and data-driven model.” That transition never produced a new exercise: as the ARC’s own evaluating-research page now states, ERA was discontinued by the Minister for Education in 2023, and the associated ERA Journal List is no longer active. The ARC has confirmed it is developing a proposed replacement, but as of mid-2026 no successor framework has launched — and several institutional pages online still describe ERA in the present tense, as though it remains an ongoing exercise. It does not; it is a closed, historical dataset spanning four rounds (2010–2018).

    What is the UK’s REF 2029?

    The Research Excellence Framework (REF) is the UK’s system for assessing research quality across UK higher education institutions, managed by Research England on behalf of the four UK funding bodies — Research England, the Scottish Funding Council, Medr (Wales), and the Department for the Economy, Northern Ireland. REF outcomes directly inform the allocation of around £2 billion a year in quality-related (QR) block-grant funding.

    REF was first carried out in 2014, replacing the earlier Research Assessment Exercise (RAE). Following consultation decisions published by the four funding bodies in June and December 2023, the next cycle was pushed back and renamed from the originally planned REF 2028 to REF 2029, with results due in December 2029.

    REF 2029 restructures assessment into three named elements: Contribution to Knowledge and Understanding (CKU, replacing the former “Outputs” element), Engagement and Impact (E&I), and a new Strategy, People and Research Environment (SPRE) element that folds in what was piloted separately as “People, Culture and Environment.” Official REF 2029 guidance also confirms the removal of the REF 2021 minimum output requirement — institutions are no longer bound to a fixed per-researcher output count.

    How do ERA and REF 2029 compare in structure and assessment units?

    Both frameworks organised assessment around disciplinary groupings rather than individual researchers, but the resemblance mostly ends there. ERA used ANZSRC Field of Research (FoR) codes, assessing all eligible outputs an institution produced in a field. REF uses Units of Assessment (UoAs) aligned to subject panels and — unlike ERA — has historically asked for a selected subset of “best” outputs rather than a comprehensive sweep.

    Dimension ERA (Australia) REF 2029 (UK)
    Current status Discontinued 2023; no active cycle Active; results due December 2029
    Administering body Australian Research Council Research England, on behalf of 4 UK funding bodies
    Assessment unit Field of Research (ANZSRC FoR codes) Unit of Assessment (UoA), subject panels
    Output scope All eligible institutional outputs per field Selected outputs; no fixed minimum for REF 2029
    Method mix Bibliometrics (STEM-heavy fields) + peer review (HASS fields) Predominantly expert peer review across panels
    Completed/planned rounds 2010, 2012, 2015, 2018 (four rounds, none since) 2014, 2021, 2029 (next)
    Direct funding link Present in early rounds; not carried through by 2018 Directly informs ~£2bn/year QR block funding

    How are journals and outputs evaluated under each framework?

    ERA’s approach to journals changed significantly across its short life. The ARC’s original 2010 round ranked journals into four tiers — A*, A, B and C — a system that proved controversial for compressing disciplinary nuance into a single letter grade. Those tiered journal rankings were discontinued from the 2012 round onward, replaced by a broader mix of citation analysis and expert panel judgement. With ERA’s discontinuation, the ERA Journal List itself is no longer maintained or active.

    REF 2029 takes a different route entirely: it has never used a centralised journal-ranking list. Instead, panels apply peer review to submitted outputs, supported in some panels by citation data as one input among several. The bigger structural change for REF 2029 is output volume, not journals — the REF 2021 minimum-output requirement per researcher is removed, alongside a new SPRE emphasis on institutional research culture rather than pure output counting.

    • ERA relied on institution-wide bibliometric and peer-review data by field, with a journal-tier system used only in its first round.
    • REF has always used panel-based peer review as its primary mechanism, with citation data as supplementary evidence in some panels only.
    • Neither framework has ever operated a CASRAI-style contributor-role taxonomy for attributing authorship within submitted outputs — both assess outputs and institutional units, not individual contributor roles.

    What should internationally mobile researchers and institutions know?

    For researchers moving between Australia and the UK, the practical takeaway is asymmetry: one country’s national exercise is dormant, the other’s is actively gathering data for a 2029 outcome. Australian institutions have no live national assessment cycle to prepare for, though the ARC’s stated intent to develop a replacement means institutional research offices should monitor ARC announcements rather than assume the gap is permanent.

    UK-bound researchers, by contrast, sit inside an active REF 2029 cycle with concrete milestones — panel recruitment, a defined census period, and December 2023 policy decisions already locking in the CKU/E&I/SPRE structure. Institutional research administration teams supporting cross-border academic staff must track both realities at once: legacy ERA data still informs Australian institutional benchmarking, while REF 2029 submission planning is a live, resourced UK project. One further caveat: because ERA’s last complete round was 2018, any “current” Australian research ranking sourced from ERA is, by definition, describing a dataset now eight years old with no refresh mechanism in place.

    Frequently asked questions

    What are the key changes for REF 2029?

    REF 2029 restructures assessment into three elements — Contribution to Knowledge and Understanding, Engagement and Impact, and a new Strategy, People and Research Environment element — and removes the REF 2021 minimum-output requirement, giving institutions more flexibility over how many outputs each researcher submits.

    Is it REF 2028 or REF 2029?

    It is REF 2029. The exercise was originally planned as REF 2028, but the four UK funding bodies extended the timetable following their December 2023 decisions, renaming it REF 2029 with results published in December 2029.

    Is ERA still used in Australia?

    No. ERA was discontinued by the Minister for Education in 2023, and its four completed rounds (2010–2018) remain the last available data. The associated ERA Journal List is no longer active, and no live assessment cycle currently exists in Australia.

    What is replacing ERA in Australia?

    The Australian Research Council is developing a proposed replacement, but as of mid-2026 it has not launched. Sector commentary describes this as an ongoing “least-worst exercise” debate over what a data-driven successor should measure and how tightly it should link to funding.

    What comes next for research assessment in both countries?

    The UK is committed to a defined REF 2029 timetable with panel recruitment, guidance publication, and a December 2029 results date already fixed by the four funding bodies. Australia’s position is far less settled: the ARC has signalled intent to replace ERA with a more data-driven model, but has not published a firm timetable, structure, or funding link for that successor. Institutions operating across both systems should treat REF 2029 as a scheduled, resourced compliance exercise, and treat any future Australian replacement as a policy development to monitor rather than a framework to plan against today.

  • Forum for Responsible Research Metrics Explained

    The Forum for Responsible Research Metrics is the UK’s national coordinating body for the responsible use of research metrics. Established in 2016 following the 2015 Metric Tide review, it advises UK higher education funding bodies on metrics use in the Research Excellence Framework (REF) and promotes alignment with DORA and CoARA principles.

    The Forum for Responsible Research Metrics is an independent, sector-wide group of UK research funders, sector bodies and infrastructure experts convened to promote fair and transparent use of quantitative indicators in research assessment. It sits alongside — but is distinct from — the global DORA declaration and the European CoARA coalition, and its guidance shapes how UK institutions design metrics policy ahead of the REF.

    What is the Forum for Responsible Research Metrics?

    The Forum for Responsible Research Metrics is a UK sector body, not a regulator. It has no statutory powers and cannot compel institutions to adopt any metric or policy. Instead it functions as an advisory and convening body, bringing together funders, universities and data-infrastructure providers to agree shared principles for using metrics responsibly in research assessment.

    Its core functions, as set out at its founding, are threefold: advise the UK higher education funding bodies on metrics use in the REF; provide advocacy and leadership on responsible metrics within the UK sector; and establish links with equivalent international initiatives. The Forum is administratively supported by Universities UK (UUK), which convenes its meetings and publishes its outputs.

    When and why was the Forum established?

    The Forum’s origins trace directly to a government-commissioned review. In 2014 the then Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) — now folded into UKRI’s Research England — commissioned an independent expert group to examine the use of metrics in research evaluation, particularly within the REF. The resulting report, The Metric Tide, was published on 9 July 2015.

    The Metric Tide concluded that metrics could be a useful adjunct to peer review but warned against their use as a substitute for expert judgement, and recommended that institutions consider signing DORA or applying its principles. It also recommended that a UK-wide body be established to advise funders on metrics use in the REF, provide sector leadership, and build international links. The Forum for Responsible Research Metrics was convened in 2016 to fulfil that recommendation.

    • 2014 — HEFCE commissions the independent metrics review
    • 9 July 2015 — The Metric Tide report is published
    • 2016 — The Forum for Responsible Research Metrics is convened, supported by Universities UK
    • 2021 — Forum advice informs metrics use across the three REF2021 assessment elements
    • December 2022 — Sector commentary (Wonkhe) calls for an expanded Forum remit, including holding data providers to account

    How does the Forum relate to DORA and CoARA?

    The Forum, DORA and CoARA are three distinct bodies with overlapping but separate mandates, and conflating them is a common source of confusion for research offices drafting policy. The table below sets out how each operates and how they connect to one another.

    Body Founded Scope Core mechanism Link to the Forum
    Forum for Responsible Research Metrics 2016 UK-wide, advisory to HE funding bodies Advises funders on metrics use in the REF; monitors DORA/CoARA uptake —
    DORA (San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment) 2013 International, institution/publisher signatory declaration Signatories pledge not to use the Journal Impact Factor as a proxy for individual quality in hiring, promotion or funding decisions The Metric Tide recommended UK institutions sign DORA; the Forum promotes and tracks its adoption
    CoARA (Coalition for Advancing Research Assessment) 2022 Pan-European coalition, member commitments Signatories commit to reforming assessment criteria and procedures over a defined implementation period Complementary European framework; several UK signatories hold both DORA and CoARA membership alongside Forum-aligned institutional policy
    REF (Research Excellence Framework) 2014 (successor to the RAE) UK-wide, all HE institutions Periodic peer-review-led assessment of research quality, impact and environment The Forum’s core client — its advice shapes how funding bodies use metrics within REF criteria

    In practice, the Forum does not ask institutions to sign anything. DORA and CoARA are commitments an institution opts into; the Forum’s guidance is advisory input into how UK funders design and apply metrics within a statutory national exercise.

    What is the Forum’s role in the REF?

    The Forum’s most concrete, recurring function is advising UK higher education funding bodies on how metrics should — and should not — be used within the REF’s three assessment elements: outputs, impact and environment. This advice fed directly into REF2021 guidance and is expected to inform preparation for the next exercise, REF 2029.

    UKRI’s Research England states that the Forum works to improve the data infrastructure underpinning metric use and the broader culture around research metrics, not just the rules for a single assessment cycle. That distinction matters for research offices: Forum guidance is a standing reference point for metrics governance, not a one-off REF submission checklist.

    • Outputs — metrics may inform but must not substitute for peer review of research quality
    • Impact — quantitative indicators supplement, rather than replace, narrative impact case studies
    • Environment — metrics contribute contextual evidence on research culture and infrastructure

    What does the Forum’s guidance mean for research offices?

    For research administrators building or reviewing a metrics policy, Forum guidance sets a de facto national baseline: metrics should be used transparently, contextually, and never as an automatic proxy for quality in hiring, promotion or funding decisions. This mirrors DORA’s core ask but is framed specifically for REF-facing institutional practice.

    Institutional research offices typically apply this in three ways: auditing existing use of journal-level and author-level metrics in internal review processes; documenting which indicators are used for which decisions and why; and aligning local policy statements with DORA and, where relevant, CoARA commitments so REF-facing metrics governance is not developed in isolation. Institutions building or auditing research assessment policy can find related structural guidance in CASRAI’s research administration resources.

    The December 2022 sector call to expand the Forum’s remit — including holding metrics data providers to account — signals that its scope is likely to widen beyond REF-facing advice toward broader accountability for the commercial infrastructure that supplies citation and impact data. Research offices should treat current Forum guidance as a floor, not a ceiling, when drafting policy ahead of REF 2029.

    Frequently asked questions

    Who chairs the UK Forum for Responsible Research Metrics?

    As of Universities UK’s most recently published listing, the Forum is chaired by Professor Max Lu, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Surrey. The Forum itself comprises representatives from UK research funders, sector bodies and data-infrastructure organisations, convened administratively by Universities UK.

    Is the Forum for Responsible Research Metrics the same as DORA?

    No. DORA is a global signatory declaration institutions and individuals opt into; the Forum is a UK sector body advising funders on metrics within the REF. The Metric Tide review recommended UK institutions sign DORA, and the Forum monitors and promotes that uptake without being DORA itself.

    What did the Metric Tide report recommend?

    Published 9 July 2015, The Metric Tide recommended that metrics support but never replace peer review, that institutions consider signing DORA, and that a national Forum be established to advise funders on responsible metrics use in the REF and build international links.

    Does the Forum’s advice apply to REF 2029?

    Yes. The Forum’s advisory role is standing, not exercise-specific, and its guidance on metrics in outputs, impact and environment assessment is expected to inform funding-body preparation for REF 2029 as it did for REF2021.

    What’s next for responsible metrics in the UK?

    With REF 2029 preparation underway and sector pressure to widen the Forum’s remit toward data-provider accountability, UK research offices should expect Forum guidance to evolve rather than stay fixed. Institutions that align internal metrics policy with Forum principles now, rather than at the point of REF submission, will face less rework as that remit expands.

  • REF University Rankings: The REF 2029 Reshuffle

    REF university rankings built from the 2021 exercise could shift meaningfully under REF 2029: the funding bodies have confirmed a weighting move away from research outputs (60% to 55%) and toward the renamed environment component (15% to 20%), which is scored 60% at institutional level. That rebalancing changes what “winning” the league table means.

    The Research Excellence Framework (REF) is the UK’s periodic, panel-based assessment of research quality across higher education institutions (HEIs), run jointly by the four UK funding bodies to inform roughly £2 billion a year in block-grant research funding. The next full cycle, REF 2029, has now moved from consultation into criteria-setting after a formal pause and resumption in late 2025 — making this the first moment institutions can meaningfully compare REF 2021 outcomes with confirmed REF 2029 rules rather than draft proposals.

    What do the REF 2021 university rankings actually show?

    There is no single official REF “league table.” REF 2021 published subject-level quality profiles for 157 institutions across 34 units of assessment, and publishers built their own institutional rankings from that data using different methodologies. Times Higher Education (THE) and Research Professional News (RPN) each produced a ranking, and they do not agree with each other because they weight staff volume differently.

    Overall, REF 2021 results showed 41% of submitted outputs rated 4* (“world-leading”) and 43% rated 3* (“internationally excellent”), according to THE’s analysis of the official results published 12 May 2022 — a marked rise on 2014. Main panel C (social sciences) recorded the largest number of submissions of any panel, up on 2014, while main panel D (arts and humanities) submissions fell, reflecting reported departmental contraction in that area.

    REF 2021: top institutions by ranking methodology
    Rank THE quality (GPA) THE research power
    1 Imperial College London University of Oxford
    2 Institute of Cancer Research University College London
    3 University of Cambridge University of Cambridge / LSE
    4 — University of Edinburgh
    5 University of Bristol University of Manchester

    A university can rank highly on pure quality (GPA) while falling well outside the top ten on research power, which multiplies GPA by the number of staff submitted. That distinction — quality versus scale — is exactly the axis REF 2029 is now adjusting.

    What is changing under REF 2029?

    REF 2029 renames and reweights the three assessment elements. The funding bodies confirmed final weightings in December 2025, after UK Science Minister Lord Vallance paused criteria-setting in September 2025 for further sector engagement. The confirmed structure is published in the REF 2029 team’s official guidance.

    REF 2021 vs REF 2029: element weighting
    Element REF 2021 weighting REF 2029 weighting Change
    Outputs → Contribution to Knowledge and Understanding (CKU) 60% 55% −5 points
    Impact → Engagement and Impact (E&I) 25% 25% No change
    Environment → Strategy, People and Research Environment (SPRE) 15% 20% +5 points

    The renamed environment element, Strategy, People and Research Environment (SPRE), builds on findings from the REF’s People, Culture and Environment (PCE) pilot. Within SPRE, an institution-level statement (ILS) is worth 60% of the SPRE score, with a unit-level statement (ULS) worth the remaining 40% — a structural detail confirmed in the REF 2029 team’s Section 7 guidance, published 10 December 2025. This means roughly 12% of a unit’s total REF 2029 profile (60% of the 20% SPRE weighting) is now determined by institution-wide strategy and culture, not subject-level performance.

    • The requirement that every researcher submit at least one output has been removed, though a recommended maximum of five outputs per researcher is reinstated.
    • Outputs remain decoupled from named individuals under the substantive-link policy, broadening how “volume” is calculated using HESA staff data.
    • Impact case study requirements are reduced for the smallest units, and the 2* qualifying threshold for underpinning research is removed.

    Under the current timetable, submissions open in autumn 2027, the submission deadline falls in autumn 2028, and results are due for publication in December 2029.

    Could REF 2029 reorder the league table?

    A five-point shift sounds modest, but it moves scoring weight from a metric institutions have optimised for since 2014 (output volume and quality) toward one that rewards institutional-level strategy and culture almost regardless of subject strength. That structural change, not the headline percentages alone, is what could reshuffle positions.

    Institutions likely to benefit are those with a well-resourced, well-evidenced institutional research strategy that can carry a strong ILS score across every unit of assessment they submit — because that 60%-weighted institutional component now applies uniformly, unlike output quality, which varies subject by subject. Universities whose REF 2021 standing rested heavily on a small number of prolific “star” researchers may see less benefit from that concentration, since outputs are decoupled from named individuals and volume is now built from broader HESA staff data rather than submitted-output counts alone.

    Conversely, institutions with strong output quality but a thin institutional environment narrative face a harder trade-off: a five-point cut to CKU is a real reduction in the component that has driven most REF 2021 rankings, and it is not automatically offset unless the SPRE submission is equally strong at both levels. Because the funding bodies deliberately minimised structural change to limit sector burden, the reordering effect will depend more on how consistently institutions execute the new ILS/ULS split than on the weighting shift alone.

    REF rankings: answered

    What is the 3* and 4* rating as defined by the Research Excellence Framework REF?

    REF grades submissions on a five-point scale. Four-star work is quality that is world-leading in originality, significance and rigour; three-star is internationally excellent but short of that highest standard, followed by two-star, one-star and unclassified grades. In REF 2021, 41% of outputs were rated 4* and 43% rated 3*, per Times Higher Education’s analysis of the official results.

    What is the Research Excellence Framework Award?

    The REF is not a single prize but the UK’s periodic system for assessing research excellence across higher education institutions, run by the four national funding bodies. Its outcomes determine how roughly £2 billion a year of block-grant research funding is allocated, and provide public accountability evidence for that investment, per the official REF 2029 site.

    What are the top 5 Russell Group universities?

    Rankings vary by metric. On THE’s REF 2021 quality (GPA) measure, leading performers included Imperial College London, the University of Cambridge, University College London, the University of Oxford and the University of Bristol. On “research power” — GPA weighted by submitted staff volume — Oxford, UCL, Cambridge, Edinburgh and Manchester led instead.

    What are the top 10 research institutions?

    No single official REF 2021 “top 10” exists; publishers rank differently by methodology. THE’s research-power table placed Oxford, UCL, Cambridge, Edinburgh, Manchester, King’s College London, Nottingham, Imperial College London, the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine and Bristol in its top ten, combining quality with submitted staff numbers.

    Implications for institutional positioning

    For research administration teams, the practical response to REF 2029 is not to wait for final panel criteria before acting on SPRE. Institutions can start building the evidence base an institution-level statement will require well ahead of the autumn 2028 submission deadline.

    • Audit existing research-culture evidence against the four SPRE sections (context/mission/strategy; people; income/infrastructure/facilities; collaboration/engagement/impact) rather than waiting for the REF 2021 environment template to be reissued unchanged.
    • Treat the institutional research strategy as a REF-relevant document, since the ILS now carries 60% of the SPRE score across every submitted unit.
    • Reassess reliance on output-driven prestige, given the five-point reduction in CKU weighting and the removal of the one-output-per-researcher minimum.
    • Track REF 2029 guidance updates directly, since panel criteria, indicators and word limits are still being finalised through 2026.

    REF 2021 rankings reflected a system built almost entirely around output quality and volume. REF 2029 does not abandon that logic — CKU still carries the largest single weighting at 55% — but it structurally raises the ceiling on what institutional strategy and culture can contribute to a unit’s profile. Whether that reorders the familiar names at the top of the table by December 2029 depends less on the confirmed percentages and more on which institutions treat SPRE as a genuine strategic exercise, not a relabelled REF 2021 environment statement. Institutions engaging with research administration planning now, ahead of final panel criteria in 2026, are better placed to manage that transition.

  • REF 2029 Units of Assessment: What’s Changing From REF 2021

    REF 2029 keeps the same 34 units of assessment (UoAs) and four main panels used in REF 2021 — the structural break is inside the scoring model, where outputs, impact and environment have been renamed, rebalanced and, for staff counting, decoupled from individual researchers. Institutions do not need to remap subject groupings; they need to replan how work within each UoA is scored and evidenced.

    The REF 2029 units of assessment are the 34 subject-based categories into which every UK higher education institution (HEI) submits research for the Research Excellence Framework, the UK-wide system that informs roughly £2 billion a year of block-grant research funding, run by Research England on behalf of the four UK funding bodies.

    What structure does REF 2029 keep from REF 2021?

    REF 2029 retains the REF 2021 unit-of-assessment structure in full. Submissions are still made into 34 UoAs, each with its own expert sub-panel, sitting under four main panels, according to the official REF 2029 guidance published by Research England.

    • Main Panel A — Medicine, Health and Life Sciences: 6 UoAs, including Clinical Medicine and Biological Sciences.
    • Main Panel B — Physical Sciences, Engineering and Mathematics: 6 UoAs, including Chemistry, Physics, Computer Science and Informatics.
    • Main Panel C — Social Sciences: 12 UoAs, including Economics and Econometrics, Business and Management Studies, and Education.
    • Main Panel D — Arts and Humanities: 10 UoAs, including History, English Language and Literature, and Music, Drama, Dance, Performing Arts, Film and Screen Studies.

    Main panels set overall criteria and ensure consistency; sub-panels develop discipline-specific assessment criteria and carry out the detailed review of submissions. Full expert panel membership for all 34 UoAs was appointed and announced in September 2025, and panels began meeting to set criteria in early 2026.

    How are the three assessment elements changing?

    The structural change that matters for planning purposes is not the UoA list — it is the renaming and rebalancing of the three elements every submission is scored against. All three have been renamed for REF 2029, and two of the three weightings have moved.

    Assessment element REF 2021 REF 2029 What changed
    Research outputs Outputs — 60% Contribution to Knowledge and Understanding (CKU) — 55% Renamed; weighting cut by 5 percentage points; minimum-output rule removed
    Non-academic benefit Impact — 25% Engagement and Impact (E&I) — 25% Renamed; weighting unchanged; 2* quality threshold for underpinning research removed
    Research culture Environment — 15% Strategy, People and Research Environment (SPRE) — 20% Renamed twice (via an interim “People, Culture and Environment” label); weighting raised by 5 points

    The Environment element had the most turbulent path to REF 2029. Research England’s four funding bodies initially proposed a “People, Culture and Environment” (PCE) element weighted at 25%, ran a sector-wide PCE pilot, then paused criteria-setting in September 2025 on the instruction of UK Science Minister Lord Vallance. When criteria-setting resumed on 10 December 2025, the element was renamed Strategy, People and Research Environment and its weighting was set at 20%, with CKU confirmed at 55% and E&I at 25% — the figures that now stand for REF 2029.

    What’s changing in how staff and outputs are counted?

    REF 2029 continues the shift, begun in REF 2021, away from assessing named individuals. Institutions will no longer submit an individual staff census; instead, the “volume measure” that determines how many outputs and impact case studies a unit must submit is calculated from an average of HESA staff record data rather than a single REF census date.

    Within Contribution to Knowledge and Understanding, the REF 2021 requirement of a minimum of one output per researcher has been removed, reducing pressure on individuals who published little during the assessment period. A recommended (non-mandatory) maximum of five outputs per researcher has been reinstated for clarity, matching REF 2021 practice. Outputs remain linked to units via a “substantive link” policy rather than to named individuals.

    What’s changing for impact case studies and portability?

    Two burden-reduction changes affect Engagement and Impact. First, the minimum number of impact case studies required has been reduced to one for units with fewer than 9.99 full-time-equivalent (FTE) staff, with revised thresholds for larger units. Second, the REF 2021 requirement that underpinning research reach at least 2-star quality to support an impact case study has been removed entirely.

    REF 2029 also introduces limited portability for long-form and extended-process research outputs, such as monographs, alongside simplified requirements — a direct response to concerns raised by arts, humanities and social science submitters about the practical effect of decoupling outputs from individual staff moves.

    How should institutions plan REF 2029 submissions?

    Because the 34 UoAs are unchanged, institutions do not need to reorganise which subject groupings they submit into. Planning effort should instead focus on three areas the funding bodies have flagged as high-impact for REF 2029 preparation:

    1. SPRE evidence-gathering — institution-level and unit-level statements on strategy, people and research environment now carry a fifth of the total score, up from a 15% Environment weighting in REF 2021, so institutions should start collating research-culture evidence well ahead of the 2027 submission window.
    2. HESA data governance — because the volume measure now derives from HESA staff record averages rather than a census date, research administration and HR data teams need aligned processes for confirming eligible contracts and cost centres.
    3. Output selection strategy — with the minimum-output rule gone but a five-output ceiling retained, units should reassess how they allocate limited high-quality outputs across contributing staff under Contribution to Knowledge and Understanding.

    The REF 2029 submission window opens in autumn 2027, the submission deadline falls in autumn 2028, and results are planned for publication in December 2029, according to the REF 2029 timetable maintained by Research England. Institutions that treat SPRE, HESA-based volume measures and output-selection policy as the priority work-streams — rather than re-litigating UoA boundaries that have not moved — will be better positioned for the assessment phase.

    Answer-first Q&A on REF 2029

    What are the REF 2029 units of assessment?

    The REF 2029 units of assessment are the same 34 subject-based categories used in REF 2021, organised under four main panels covering medicine and life sciences, physical sciences and engineering, social sciences, and arts and humanities. Each UoA has its own expert sub-panel that develops discipline-specific criteria.

    What are the key changes for REF 2029?

    The key changes are not to the units of assessment but to how work within them is scored: outputs become Contribution to Knowledge and Understanding (55%), impact becomes Engagement and Impact (25%), and environment becomes Strategy, People and Research Environment (20%), alongside HESA-based staff-output counting.

    What publications are eligible for REF 2029?

    Eligible outputs are original research publications with a substantive link to an eligible staff member’s employment, assessed under Contribution to Knowledge and Understanding. REF 2029 removes the REF 2021 minimum of one output per researcher, reinstates a recommended maximum of five, and introduces limited portability for long-form outputs such as monographs.

    What does REF mean in a university context?

    REF stands for the Research Excellence Framework, the UK-wide system for assessing research quality in higher education institutions. It informs the allocation of around £2 billion a year in block-grant research funding and is run by Research England on behalf of the four UK higher education funding bodies.

    What comes next for REF 2029 planning

    With weightings confirmed and full panel criteria due by autumn 2026, the structural picture for REF 2029 is now settled enough for research administration teams to build submission timelines around it. The open questions that remain — detailed panel criteria, Code of Practice approval windows, and the mechanics of SPRE evidence templates — will be published in modules through 2026, making the REF 2029 guidance pages, not third-party summaries, the authoritative reference for any submission-critical detail.

  • REF 2029 Outputs Decoupling: What It Signals for Contribution Recognition

    REF 2029 decouples research outputs from named researchers: institutions submit outputs to a Unit of Assessment rather than to an individual, judged instead on a “substantive link” between the institution and the work. This shifts REF evaluation from researcher performance to institutional research environment, raising the stakes for how contribution is separately evidenced.

    Decoupling is the REF 2029 policy mechanism that removes the formal link between a submitted research output and the named staff member who produced it, so that outputs are assessed as belonging to a Unit of Assessment (UoA) rather than to an individual author.

    What does “decoupling” mean under REF 2029?

    Under REF 2029, outputs are submitted to a Unit of Assessment without staff details attached to individual pieces of work. No researcher name is carried through the submission record, and no output is presented as belonging to one specific author for assessment purposes.

    This reshapes the submitted category itself: what was previously called “outputs” is now Contributions to Knowledge and Understanding (CKU), which carries a 55% weighting in the overall institutional score, according to REF 2029’s official Section 1 overview. The remaining weighting splits between Strategy, People and Research Environment (20%) and Engagement and Impact (roughly 25%).

    Practical consequences of decoupling include:

    • No minimum or maximum number of outputs required from any individual staff member.
    • A recommended (not mandatory) ceiling of five outputs per researcher, reinstated in REF 2029’s December 2025 update after an earlier proposal for no cap at all.
    • Eligibility broadened to outputs produced by a wider range of roles, including technicians and research managers, not only conventionally “REF-able” academic staff.

    Instead of an author-output link, REF 2029 requires institutions to demonstrate a substantive link between the submitting institution and the output. A substantive link is generally established through an eligible employment relationship of at least 12 months at a minimum of 0.2 full-time equivalent (FTE), per REF 2029’s guidance on Contributions to Knowledge and Understanding.

    Where employment alone is insufficient or the researcher has since left, institutions may point to supporting evidence such as:

    • Internal research support, including funding for materials, technical assistance, or conference attendance.
    • Evidence of work-in-progress presentations, internal or external.
    • An external grant supporting a relevant programme of research held during the employment period.

    Outputs cannot be claimed where the substantive link occurred only after the output was made public and the author was subject to compulsory redundancy — a safeguard REF 2029 added following sector feedback on the risk of institutions retaining the outputs of staff they had made redundant.

    How does this differ from REF 2014 and REF 2021?

    Decoupling is not new to REF 2029; it extends a direction of travel set out in the 2016 Stern Review of the REF, which recommended non-portability of outputs to reduce “poaching” incentives that favoured wealthier institutions. Each REF cycle has progressively loosened the tie between researcher identity and institutional claim.

    REF cycle Output–researcher link Portability on staff move
    REF 2014 Output captured entirely by the institution employing the researcher at the census date Full transfer with the researcher
    REF 2021 Output could be captured by both the origin and destination institution on a move Partial (dual claim)
    REF 2029 Output captured by the institution demonstrating a substantive link; no named author attached Restricted; long-form outputs (e.g. monographs) retain five-year portability

    The volume of outputs an institution must submit is unchanged in formula terms: it remains the institution’s staff volume measure (FTE) multiplied by 2.5 at UoA level, consistent with the REF 2021 approach reported by REF 2029 planning guidance published by the University of Reading and others.

    What does decoupling signal for evidencing contribution?

    REF 2029’s decoupling addresses institutional-level attribution — which organisation gets credit for an output — but it does not answer a separate, longstanding question: which individuals, and in what capacity, actually contributed to producing it. That question sits squarely in the domain of contributorship taxonomies rather than research assessment exercises.

    This is where the REF 2029 shift and the contributor-role movement intersect without colliding. CASRAI originated the CRediT contributor role taxonomy in 2014 to make individual contribution to scholarly outputs explicit and machine-readable; the standard is now stewarded by NISO as ANSI/NISO Z39.104-2022. Where REF 2029 deliberately removes the researcher’s name from the assessment record, CRediT statements retained in the published output itself remain the mechanism by which an individual’s specific role — conceptualisation, methodology, writing, data curation — stays evidenced and citable, independent of how any national assessment exercise chooses to allocate institutional credit.

    For institutions, the practical implication is that internal recognition, promotion, and workload evidence can no longer lean on REF submission data as a proxy for individual contribution, because REF 2029 submissions will not carry that data. Institutions building internal case files for tenure, promotion, or grant applications need contribution evidence that exists independently of the REF submission — structured CRediT role statements attached to outputs, ORCID-linked publication records, and clear internal documentation of the “substantive link” evidence (funding, supervision, work-in-progress records) that REF 2029 itself now requires institutions to compile.

    Guidance on research administration practice and on the underlying CRediT taxonomy is a reasonable starting point for research offices building this parallel evidence base ahead of the REF 2029 submission window.

    Answer-first questions on REF 2029 outputs

    What are the changes in REF 2029 for outputs?

    REF 2029 renames outputs as Contributions to Knowledge and Understanding (CKU), weighted at 55% of the overall score, removes individual minimum and maximum output requirements, reinstates a recommended cap of five outputs per researcher, and requires a substantive link rather than a named author for eligibility.

    Why is REF 2029’s decoupling of outputs important?

    It marks a formal shift in what REF measures: institutional research environment and support, not individual researcher performance. Funding allocation logic follows institutions, so REF 2029 aligns assessment evidence with who receives the funding — the institution — rather than the individual author of an output.

    What outputs are eligible for REF 2029?

    Eligible outputs must be brought into the public domain between 1 January 2021 and 31 December 2028, meet REF 2029’s open access requirements, and demonstrate a substantive link to the submitting institution. Outputs solely authored by PhD students or teaching-only staff are generally not eligible.

    Are REF 2029 outputs portable when staff move institution?

    Portability is now restricted rather than automatic. Long-form outputs, such as monographs, retain five-year portability so they stay attached to the author after a move; most other outputs are captured by whichever institution holds the substantive link at the point of submission.

    Implications and outlook for institutions

    Research offices preparing for REF 2029 face two parallel evidencing tasks rather than one. The first is REF-facing: documenting the substantive link — employment records, internal research support, grant funding — for every output an institution intends to submit. The second is internal: maintaining contribution records that support promotion, recognition, and researcher career narratives now that REF submissions themselves will not do this job.

    Sector commentary, including analysis from Wonkhe’s research and innovation desk, has framed this as REF revealing its true purpose: an institutional funding mechanism rather than a personal-merit exercise. Institutions that treat the two evidencing tasks as genuinely separate — REF eligibility on one track, individual contribution recognition on another — are better placed to avoid a governance gap where good research goes on the REF return but the people who did it go unrecorded anywhere durable.