CASRAI Dictionary

Tag: ref 2029 changes

  • REF 2029 Academic Employment Uncertainty for Contract Staff

    REF 2029’s decision to weaken output portability, then partially reverse that decision after a three-month pause in late 2025, has left fixed-term and early-career researchers unsure whether published work will count towards their next job. A five-year portability window now applies to long-form outputs such as monographs, but shorter outputs generally stay with the institution that supported them — a “half in, half out” compromise that unions and sector commentators say still leaves contract staff exposed.

    The Research Excellence Framework (REF) 2029 is the seventh national exercise assessing the quality of research produced by UK higher education institutions, run jointly by the UK’s four higher education funding bodies, with submissions due in autumn 2028.

    What changed in REF 2029’s portability rules?

    REF 2029’s original proposal effectively ended portability: outputs would stay attached to the institution that employed the researcher when the work was produced, even after that researcher left. This was designed to stop institutions “poaching” research-active staff shortly before a census date purely to inflate a submission.

    Following the 2025 pause, the REF team confirmed on 10 December 2025 that long-form outputs — principally monographs — would carry a five-year portability window, meaning a researcher can take these specific outputs to a new institution for up to five years from publication. Shorter outputs remain governed by the decoupling principle: an institution can still submit work by a researcher who has since departed. The REF team also reinstated a recommended maximum of five outputs per researcher, having earlier proposed removing any minimum.

    Element REF 2021 REF 2029 (post-pause, Dec 2025)
    Outputs / Contributions to Knowledge and Understanding weighting 60% 55%
    Impact / Engagement and Impact weighting 25% 25%
    Environment / Strategy, People and Research Environment weighting 15% 20%
    Output portability for long-form work Full portability 5-year window (monographs)
    Output portability for standard outputs Full portability Decoupled from researcher
    Recommended output cap per researcher No fixed cap 5 (reinstated)

    Why was REF 2029 paused in 2025 — and what resumed?

    Research England, on behalf of the four UK funding bodies, confirmed a three-month pause in REF 2029’s criteria-setting process from September 2025. UKRI stated the pause was needed “to take stock and ensure alignment with the UK government’s priorities and vision for higher education.” The pause followed sustained pushback over the proposed end to output portability: in Times Higher Education on 23 September 2025, scholars argued that breaking the link between researchers and their outputs “harms academic mobility and disciplinary excellence.”

    Criteria setting resumed on 10 December 2025, with the REF team publishing revised guidance covering portability, output caps, and the renamed Strategy, People and Research Environment (SPRE) element. The SPRE weighting is split 60% institution-level statement and 40% unit-level statement, replacing the single Environment statement used in REF 2021.

    How does this affect fixed-term and early-career researchers?

    Fixed-term and early-career researchers are disproportionately exposed because their career currency is recent published output, and they move institutions more frequently than staff on permanent contracts. Under REF 2029’s decoupling principle, a researcher who leaves a post before the next census period may find that shorter-form outputs they produced stay credited to the former employer, with no guarantee the new institution can submit the same work.

    REF 2029 also introduces a substantive-link test for counting outputs from staff on part-time or non-standard contracts: at least 0.2 FTE and 12 months of contracted employment with a documented “research expectation.” Guidance does not require institutions to prove that time, funding or workload relief was actually provided to support that research — a gap flagged by commentators writing for Wonkhe in December 2025, who noted the term “research expectation” “remains vague” and can amount to “little more than a nominal clause.”

    A peer-reviewed analysis published in Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers (Wiley) goes further, warning that “the growing uncertainties around REF 2029 are likely to foster a drift towards greater reliance on metrics and procedural compliance” — a dynamic that tends to disadvantage staff without secure, long-term contracts who cannot easily demonstrate institutional “sustainability.”

    • Researchers negotiating a move should ask prospective employers directly whether specific outputs will be portable under the five-year monograph window or excluded under decoupling.
    • Contract length and FTE now matter for REF eligibility, not just for pay and pension — a role below 0.2 FTE or under 12 months may not generate a countable “significant responsibility for research” record in HESA data.
    • The reinstated five-output cap changes competitive dynamics: fewer, stronger outputs may now carry more weight than a large back-catalogue built across several employers.

    What have unions and sector bodies said?

    The University and College Union (UCU), the main trade union representing UK academic and research staff, has for several REF cycles argued that assessment periods create incentives for institutions to concentrate research-active contracts around census dates rather than offer secure, long-term posts — a pattern that REF 2029’s shift to HESA-derived staff volumes was partly designed to reduce, since submissions no longer require institutions to name individual staff.

    Russell Group universities issued a joint statement on 10 December 2025 welcoming the resumption of criteria setting, while a Wonkhe analysis the same day observed that REF 2029 “talks about people again” through SPRE but that “early career labour is still hard to see” in how research contribution is actually counted. Research Professional News reported that the reinstated five-output cap and monograph portability window were the two concessions the sector had pushed hardest for during the pause.

    Common questions on REF 2029 employment uncertainty

    What are the key changes for REF 2029?

    REF 2029 rebalances weightings toward Strategy, People and Research Environment (up to 20%) and away from outputs (down to 55%), replaces individual staff submission with HESA-derived staff volume, reinstates a five-output cap per researcher, and grants five-year portability only to long-form outputs such as monographs.

    Why has REF 2029 been paused?

    Research England paused REF 2029’s criteria-setting process for three months from September 2025 following sector concern over the proposed end to output portability, stating the pause would allow the funding bodies to “take stock and ensure alignment” with government priorities before finalising guidance.

    Are REF outputs portable?

    Only partially. REF 2029 grants a five-year portability window to long-form outputs like monographs when a researcher changes institution. Shorter, standard outputs are generally decoupled — they can still be submitted by the former employer even after the researcher has left.

    Why is REF 2029 important for research careers?

    REF outcomes shape roughly £2 billion a year in England’s quality-related research funding allocation, so how outputs, portability and staff volume are counted directly affects hiring, promotion and contract-renewal decisions — making REF 2029’s rules a material factor in academic job security, not just an institutional accounting exercise.

    What should contract staff and institutions do now?

    For fixed-term and early-career staff, the practical response is to treat portability status as a standard question in job negotiations, alongside salary and workload — not an afterthought discovered after a move. Institutions preparing REF 2029 codes of practice should document, in writing, how “research expectation” is defined for non-standard contracts, given that ambiguity here is precisely what commentators have flagged as the mechanism through which precarity goes uncounted.

    The debate is unlikely to close cleanly. REF 2029’s guidance remains subject to further sector consultation ahead of the autumn 2028 submission, and the five-year monograph window will itself need testing against real career moves before its effect on mobility is clear. What is already established is that portability is no longer a settled default in UK research assessment — it is now a negotiated, output-type-specific rule that early-career and fixed-term staff need to understand before, not after, they change jobs.

  • 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.

  • REF 2029 Output Eligibility: OA Exceptions

    REF 2029 output eligibility does not require every journal article or conference paper to be immediately open access. The policy allows four exception categories — deposit, access, technical, and a catch-all “other” route covering staff circumstances, third-party rights and technical infeasibility — each keeping an otherwise non-compliant output eligible, provided the exception is identified, evidenced and stays within a unit’s five per cent non-compliance tolerance.

    The REF 2029 open access policy is the UK funding bodies’ requirement that in-scope journal articles and conference proceedings, published between 1 January 2021 and 31 December 2028, be deposited, discoverable and freely accessible to be eligible for the Research Excellence Framework 2029, subject to defined exceptions.

    Durham University’s Library Research Support service publishes a working exceptions log — updated as recently as 1 July 2026 — that maps each permitted exception to the evidence a research office should hold, offering a practical template for institutions building their own REF 2029 compliance file.

    Contents

    What counts as an REF 2029 output eligibility exception?

    An REF 2029 output eligibility exception is a recognised circumstance under which an in-scope journal article or conference contribution is exempt from some or all open access criteria while remaining eligible for submission. The REF 2029 open access policy, last updated 13 June 2025, groups these into deposit, access and technical exceptions plus a further “other” exception for circumstances beyond an institution’s control.

    Applying an exception correctly means the output is treated as no-detriment and does not count against a unit’s compliance tolerance. Misapplying one, or failing to evidence it, risks the output being reclassified as unclassified during audit.

    Two separate exception frameworks apply depending on when the output was first published:

    • Outputs published 1 January 2021 to 31 December 2025 follow the carried-forward REF 2021 exception categories, with one additional exception added for REF 2029.
    • Outputs published from 1 January 2026 follow a revised, consolidated exceptions framework of four categories, alongside tighter embargo maxima (six months for Main Panels A and B, twelve months for Main Panels C and D, down from twelve and twenty-four months respectively).

    Individual staff circumstances: who qualifies for an exception?

    Staff-circumstance exceptions cover authors whose personal, employment or contractual situation made compliance genuinely impossible. Under the “other” exception, this includes extenuating personal circumstances such as extended leave, industrial action, institutional closure days, and software problems not already covered by the technical category.

    A related technical exception applies where an output has a substantive connection to the submitting institution but was published after the author’s employment ended, and compliance could not be determined. A further exception, introduced for REF 2029, exempts outputs authored entirely by staff ineligible for the volume measure, since they had no expectation of needing compliance.

    One risk is flagged explicitly: institutions relying heavily on the “other” category are more likely to attract a higher audit risk score, though deposit, access or technical exceptions do not themselves raise risk. A researcher on long-term sick leave whose manuscript could not be deposited within the three-month window would typically be recorded under “other”, with leave dates and repository correspondence kept as evidence — the record Durham’s log recommends holding before, not after, submission.

    Third-party rights and technical infeasibility: the other routes

    Third-party rights exceptions apply where an output reproduces content — images, data extracts, previously published material — for which open licences could not be obtained at reasonable cost or within the required timescale. Here, deposit and discovery requirements still apply; only access and/or licensing conditions are waived.

    Technical infeasibility exceptions cover cases where the failure sits with infrastructure rather than the author: a repository’s short-term technical failure (excluding systemic issues), or an external service provider failure, such as a subject repository that did not lift an embargo on schedule or ceased operating altogether.

    Exception category What it exempts Typical qualifying scenario
    Deposit All open access criteria (deposit, discovery, access, licensing) Unlawful to deposit; publisher disallows repository deposit; delay securing final peer-reviewed text
    Access Access, embargo and/or licensing only — deposit and discovery still required Embargo exceeds policy maxima; third-party content licensing unavailable
    Technical All open access criteria Repository or external service provider failure; employment ended before publication
    Other All open access criteria Personal circumstances, industrial action, closure days, unlisted software issues

    Durham’s exceptions log as a working model

    Durham University’s Library Research Support service maintains a dedicated REF 2029 Open Access Exceptions guide, structured as four tabs: deposit, access, and technical/other exceptions for outputs published to 31 December 2025, plus a consolidated four-category framework for outputs from 1 January 2026. Each tab pairs the qualifying scenarios with how the exception is expected to be evidenced during any future audit.

    Two features make it a useful model: it separates outputs by publication date, since qualifying criteria and embargo maxima genuinely differ either side of 1 January 2026; and it is candid about what remains unresolved. As of its 1 July 2026 update, Durham states that “the internal process for applying exceptions is yet to be confirmed,” directing queries to its repository administration team meanwhile — a reminder that internal workflows keep evolving well after the REF policy text has stabilised.

    Documenting exceptions for audit: what research offices must keep

    REF 2029 audit will broadly mirror the risk-based approach used for REF 2021, per the funding bodies’ guidance, while final procedures remain under development. In REF 2021, ten institutions’ submissions were selected for second-stage audit on a risk basis, producing four data adjustments; three were separately selected for substantive sampling; one had to adjust its submission by a single output. For REF 2029, evidence may be required at individual-output level, including written justification for any use of the “other” category.

    A minimum evidence file for each exception should include:

    1. The exception category claimed and the REF 2029 guidance paragraph it falls under.
    2. Dates of acceptance, publication and deposit, plus any embargo end date.
    3. Correspondence documenting the barrier — a publisher refusal, or confirmation of a service outage.
    4. A short narrative justification, particularly for “most appropriate publication” or “other” claims.
    5. Confirmation the output falls within the unit’s five per cent, or one-output, tolerance.

    Institutions should also monitor exception mix over time: a submission weighted heavily toward “other”, rather than deposit, access or technical exceptions, is more likely to draw a higher audit risk score, even where every claim is legitimate.

    Answer-first Q&A

    What is the publication period for REF 2029?

    The output types in scope of the REF 2029 open access policy are journal articles and conference contributions with an International Standard Serial Number, first published between 1 January 2021 and 31 December 2028. Outputs published from 1 January 2026 follow revised deposit, embargo and licensing requirements, while earlier outputs follow REF 2021-derived rules carried forward for REF 2029.

    What publications are eligible for REF 2029?

    Eligible outputs include journal articles and conference proceedings with an ISSN, plus long-form outputs such as monographs, book chapters and scholarly editions, which carry no open access requirement. Datasets, code, protocols and artistic creations are also welcomed, though they sit outside the open access policy’s scope entirely.

    What does the REF output rating measure?

    REF output quality is measured against three fundamental dimensions: originality, the development of new concepts or techniques; significance, the capacity to influence scholarly thought, policy or practice; and rigour, the intellectual coherence and robustness of the methodology. Open access exceptions affect eligibility, not the quality score itself, which panels assess independently.

    What this means for research offices ahead of REF 2029

    For research administration teams, exception management is now a compliance workstream in its own right, not an afterthought bolted onto repository deposit. With a five per cent (or one-output) tolerance per unit of assessment, a handful of poorly evidenced exceptions can tip a submission over the threshold and trigger removal of otherwise strong outputs. Institutions should build an exceptions log now, using Durham’s date-segmented structure as a template: separate outputs to 31 December 2025 from those from 1 January 2026, record the exception paragraph relied upon, and retain evidence when the exception first arises, not retrospectively. Given that REF 2021 audits produced adjustments even at confident institutions, a living exceptions file — not a retrospective justification exercise — separates a smooth submission from a last-minute scramble.

  • REF 2029 Portability: What Changes for Moving Staff

    REF 2029 portability ends automatic transfer of most research outputs when staff change institutions. Outputs are now “decoupled” from individual authors and instead require a demonstrable “substantive link” to the submitting institution, with one exception: long-form outputs such as monographs stay portable with the author for five years. The rule, confirmed by the four UK funding bodies in December 2025, replaces the dual-submission compromise used in REF 2021.

    Portability, in REF terms, is the rule set that determines which institution — the one a researcher has left, or the one they have joined — may submit a given research output for assessment. REF 2029 narrows that rule further than any previous exercise, and the change has become one of the most contested elements of the framework’s redesign.

    What REF 2029 Changes for Portability

    REF 2029’s initial decisions, published in 2023, “decoupled” research outputs from the individual researchers who produced them. Where REF 2021 attributed outputs to named staff on a submission list, REF 2029 requires only that a submitting institution demonstrate a substantive link to the output — evidence that it supported the underlying research.

    Research England’s Head of REF Policy has described this as a shift toward assessing “how well organisations are supporting research excellence” rather than tracking individual output counts. In practice, that means the REF volume measure and staff lists are no longer the sole determinants of which outputs an institution may submit.

    For standard outputs — journal articles, conference papers, most datasets and software — the substantive link is generally established by an eligible employment relationship between the institution and the author when the research was conducted or the output first made publicly available. Once a researcher leaves, that link does not automatically transfer to their new employer.

    This is a marked departure from REF 2021, which let both the origin and destination institution return an output where a researcher transferred, and from REF 2014, where only the destination institution could submit if the move happened before a single census date. The table below sets out how the rule has moved across three cycles.

    REF cycle Portability rule Long-form treatment
    REF 2014 Single census date; only the destination institution could submit if a researcher moved before it No separate treatment
    REF 2021 Compromise rule: both origin and destination institutions could return the same output on transfer No separate treatment
    REF 2029 Outputs decoupled from individuals; standard outputs require a substantive institutional link and are not portable Portable for five years if the new post began within that window

    The REF 2021 compromise itself had a contested history: Lord Stern’s 2016 independent review of the REF recommended full non-portability, but Research England judged that too significant a change to introduce that late in the REF 2021 cycle, and adopted dual submission instead.

    Why Long-Form Outputs Get a Five-Year Exception

    On 10 December 2025, following a three-month pause and intense sector pushback, REF 2029 published updated guidance restoring limited portability for “long-form and extended-process” outputs — monographs, edited collections and scholarly editions. These remain attached to the author for five years, provided the researcher’s employment at the new institution began within that window.

    According to Times Higher Education’s reporting on the announcement, institutions can deploy this exception where the academic was employed at some point during a two-year staff census window that opened in September 2025 — though commentators on that same report disputed how directly the census window bears on long-form eligibility, underlining how unsettled the operational detail still is.

    Reaction split along familiar lines. Jennifer Richards, chair of the English Association and professor of English literature at the University of Cambridge, called herself “delighted that an element of portability has been restored,” describing it as “a ‘win’ for all researchers in a sector that has become increasingly precarious at every stage of career.” Margot Finn, vice-president for higher education and research at the British Academy, called the concession “excellent and very welcome.” Rosa Freedman, professor of law at the University of Reading, was less convinced, arguing the “half in-half out” approach “doesn’t seem to have much logic” and that outputs should belong either wholly to the employer or wholly to the researcher.

    What the Sector Consultation Flagged as Unresolved Risk

    Sector consultation ahead of the December 2025 decision surfaced risks that the rule change does not fully resolve. Institutions can still retain long-form outputs credited to staff they have since made redundant — a concession the reversal did not touch. Several concerns recur across the consultation record:

    • Early-career and precariously employed researchers lose standard outputs as a bargaining tool when applying for new posts, since those outputs no longer travel with them.
    • Redundant staff may see their long-form outputs retained and submitted by an institution that has already ended their employment.
    • Co-authored outputs where authors move to different institutions raise unresolved questions about which institution’s substantive link takes precedence, particularly where authorship attribution is contested.
    • Discipline-specific impact: arts, humanities and social science bodies — including the English Association, the Institute of English Studies and University English — wrote jointly to flag that decoupling disproportionately affects fields where long-form outputs and precarious contracts are both common.

    A joint Wonkhe analysis by academics at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, the University of Oxford and the University of Edinburgh went further, warning that decoupling removes any auditable limit on how many outputs by one individual a unit can submit, which they argued undermines the diversity-of-contribution goal the rule change was partly designed to serve.

    Common Questions on REF 2029 Portability

    What period does REF 2029 cover?

    REF 2029 runs on an extended timetable after the exercise was renamed from REF 2028 to REF 2029 in a December 2023 decision. The criteria-setting phase runs to summer 2026, the assessment phase is planned for winter 2028 to autumn 2029, with results published in December 2029.

    What outputs are eligible for REF 2029?

    Standard outputs are eligible where the submitting institution demonstrates a substantive link — typically an eligible employment relationship with the author when the research was conducted or first made public. Long-form outputs, such as monographs, remain eligible at a new institution for five years after the researcher’s move.

    What is the weighting for REF 2029?

    REF 2029’s December 2025 guidance weights Contributions to Knowledge and Understanding at 55% of the overall quality profile, Engagement and Impact at 25%, and Strategy, People and Research Environment at 20%, shifting emphasis toward institutional research culture rather than individual output counts.

    Is it REF 2028 or REF 2029?

    It is REF 2029. The four UK funding bodies renamed the exercise from REF 2028 to REF 2029 in December 2023, extending the assessment timetable to give institutions more time to adjust to decoupling, open access and portability rule changes ahead of results in December 2029.

    What Institutions Should Do Next

    Research administrators handling staff transfers should treat the substantive-link test, not the researcher’s current employer, as the operative question for every output under consideration. That means auditing when each output’s underlying research was conducted or first made public, and mapping it against the employment record at that time — a task that sits squarely with research administration teams managing REF submission pipelines.

    For long-form outputs, institutions should document the five-year window and the justification for classifying a work as “long-form and extended-process” at the point of hire, not retrospectively. Because the rule change also reopens questions about how authorship attribution interacts with institutional submission rights, joint appointments and co-authored outputs deserve particular scrutiny before the assessment phase begins in 2027.

    The sector consultation record makes clear that portability remains an unresolved fairness question, not a settled technical rule. Institutions that build audit trails now — rather than waiting for further REF guidance — will be better placed when panels begin assessing submissions from 2028 onward.