CASRAI Dictionary

Tag: REF panels 2029

  • 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weightings and simplified guidance after an autumn pause – but the detailed Panel Criteria and Working Methods remain unpublished until Autumn 2026.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 Panel Members: Who Sets the Criteria

    REF 2029 panel members are the academics, practitioners and non-academic experts appointed to the four main panels and 34 sub-panels that will set discipline-level assessment criteria and judge institutional submissions for the UK’s next Research Excellence Framework. Recruitment ran through open application in 2024–2025 — a first for the REF, replacing the nomination system used in REF 2021 — and the panels appointed under that process are now the body directly shaping the criteria, after a short government-ordered pause in autumn 2025.

    REF 2029 is the UK’s next national research assessment exercise, run jointly by the four UK higher education funding bodies to allocate around £2 billion a year in quality-related research funding to higher education institutions based on the quality of their research outputs, impact and environment.

    What Is REF 2029 Panel Recruitment?

    Panel recruitment is the process by which the four UK higher education funding bodies — Research England, the Scottish Funding Council, Medr (Wales’ Commission for Tertiary Education and Research) and the Department for the Economy, Northern Ireland — appoint the experts who will run REF 2029. There are two panel types.

    • Main panels (four in total) set the overall approach and criteria for assessing outputs, impact and environment within their disciplinary area, and approve final assessment outcomes.
    • Sub-panels (34 in total, one per Unit of Assessment) develop discipline-specific criteria and carry out the detailed assessment of institutional submissions.

    Each main panel includes its sub-panel chairs plus members with interdisciplinary, international and non-academic expertise. This structure mirrors REF 2021, but the route into panel membership does not.

    How Were REF 2029 Panel Members Recruited?

    For the first time in the REF’s history, every panel role was filled through open application rather than nomination. REF 2029’s own account of the process says this was designed “to support more transparent and consistent processes whilst removing barriers to application for everyone,” shaped with sector bodies and the REF 2029 People and Diversity Advisory Panel (PDAP).

    Recruitment moved through four stages:

    • Main panel chairs were recruited and confirmed first, ahead of the wider sub-panel campaign.
    • Sub-panel chairs and deputy chairs for all 34 Units of Assessment were then recruited, with applications for panel and sub-panel member roles closing by 28 April 2025, as the Royal Economic Society reported at the time; the appointed chairs and deputy chairs were announced on 22 May 2025.
    • Full panel membership — the wider pool of sub-panel members and assessors — was announced on 4 September 2025, described by the REF team as a “highly qualified and diverse group of experts” appointed across all 34 UoAs, including over two dozen panellists from industry, policy and third-sector organisations.
    • Further targeted recruitment is scheduled for 2027, informed by a sector-wide survey of submission intentions and any gaps in panel expertise identified during criteria setting.

    Shortlisting expertise was drawn from the REF Steering Group, relevant sector bodies and, once appointed, the panel chairs themselves. Applicants could optionally complete a diversity survey; that data was stripped from applications before assessment, in line with UKRI processes, and will be reported on separately in early 2026.

    Who Are the REF 2029 Main and Sub-Panel Chairs?

    The 34 sub-panels sit beneath four main panels, each covering a broad disciplinary group:

    • Main Panel A — Medicine, Health and Life Sciences
    • Main Panel B — Physical Sciences, Engineering and Mathematics
    • Main Panel C — Social Sciences
    • Main Panel D — Arts and Humanities

    For example, Sub-panel 1 (Clinical Medicine) is chaired by Peter Openshaw of Imperial College London, with Diana Eccles of the University of Southampton as deputy chair — one of 34 discipline-specific leadership pairs confirmed across the exercise. A small number of deputy chair appointments, including for Chemistry and Computer Science and Informatics, were finalised slightly later. The full, current roster for every Unit of Assessment sits on REF’s own panels pages rather than reproduced here, since composition is periodically refined through further recruitment rounds to 2027.

    What Does Panel Recruitment Mean for the REF 2029 Criteria?

    The timing of panel recruitment matters because it happened before a significant interruption to the criteria-setting timetable. In September 2025, UK Science Minister Lord Vallance announced at the Universities UK conference that the four funding bodies would pause criteria setting and final guidance “to take stock, ensure alignment with government priorities… and reflect on feedback from the sector.” The panels — chairs, deputy chairs and members — had already been appointed that same day, so they could begin criteria-setting work the moment the framework was confirmed, without a second recruitment cycle.

    When the pause concluded, the funding bodies published updated policy that changed how REF 2029 will actually be weighted:

    Assessment element REF 2021 weighting REF 2029 weighting
    Outputs / Contributions to Knowledge and Understanding (CKU) 60% 55%
    Engagement and Impact (E&I) 25% 25%
    Environment / Strategy, People and Research Environment (SPRE) 15% 20%
    Panel member selection route Nomination Open application

    SPRE replaces the previously trialled “People, Culture and Environment” element and builds on the REF 2021 Environment component, informed by a PCE pilot report published alongside the update. A recommended maximum of five outputs per researcher was reinstated, the minimum-of-one requirement was dropped, impact case study requirements were reduced to one for the smallest units, and the 2* qualifying threshold for underpinning research was removed.

    One further governance point deserves attention: the funding bodies confirmed there will be no formal consultation on the final guidance or the Panel Criteria and Working Methods, in order to hold the original REF 2029 timetable. That leaves the already-recruited panels — not a fresh sector-wide consultation round — as the primary mechanism through which discipline-level detail gets finalised. Panels began meeting in early 2026 to set criteria, which is why who sits on them, and how they got there, is now a governance question with direct consequences for submission requirements.

    Answer-First Questions on REF 2029 Panels

    What are the key changes for REF 2029?

    REF 2029 introduces Strategy, People and Research Environment (SPRE), weighted at 20%, replacing the trialled “People, Culture and Environment” element. Contributions to Knowledge and Understanding is weighted 55% and Engagement and Impact 25%. Outputs remain decoupled from individuals, and unit-level statements have been removed to reduce sector burden.

    How many units of assessment are there in REF 2029?

    REF 2029 retains 34 Units of Assessment (UoAs), unchanged in number from REF 2021. Each UoA is assessed by an expert sub-panel operating under one of four main panels covering medicine and health, physical sciences and engineering, social sciences, and arts and humanities.

    Who runs the REF?

    The REF is run by a REF team managed by Research England on behalf of the UK’s four higher education funding bodies — Research England, the Scottish Funding Council, Medr, and the Department for the Economy, Northern Ireland — who jointly own it as a UK-wide programme of national research assessment.

    What is engagement and impact in REF 2029?

    Engagement and Impact (E&I), weighted 25% of the overall score, assesses the demonstrable benefit research has beyond academia. Impact case study requirements have been reduced to one for the smallest submitting units, and the previous 2* qualifying threshold for underpinning research has been removed.

    Implications for Institutions and Researchers

    Three practical points follow for research administration teams. First, panel composition is now discipline-owned: sub-panels, not a single central body, are writing the detailed criteria for each Unit of Assessment, so institutional REF contacts should track guidance at sub-panel level, not just headline main-panel weightings.

    Second, with no formal consultation round on the final guidance, engagement now runs through REF Talks, town halls and sector-body channels rather than written consultation — institutions wanting influence need to use those live channels while criteria setting is underway.

    Third, the 2027 top-up recruitment round means panel composition is not fixed until closer to the assessment phase; institutions with relevant expertise, including professional services staff, technicians and librarians (recruited into REF 2029 panels for the first time), retain a further opportunity to apply.

    Taken together, the shift to open recruitment and the post-pause weighting changes mean REF 2029’s criteria are being finalised by a panel population that looks structurally different from REF 2021: more open in its selection, more heavily weighted toward research environment, and operating with less formal sector sign-off. For research administration teams preparing Code of Practice submissions, that makes early, sub-panel-level engagement more valuable than in any previous REF cycle.