CASRAI Dictionary

Tag: Research Excellence Framework

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • REF 2029 Timeline: Panel Criteria to Submission

    The REF 2029 timeline runs from the 2023 “Initial Decisions” consultation through panel criteria-setting in 2026, a submission window opening in autumn 2027, a final submission deadline in autumn 2028, and publication of results in December 2029. The Research Excellence Framework (REF) is the UK’s system for assessing research quality across higher education institutions, run jointly by the four UK higher education funding bodies through Research England.

    Research administrators planning REF 2029 submissions need more than a single headline date — they need the full sequence: when criteria are finalised, when the output and impact eligibility periods start and end, when panels are recruited, and when institutions must submit. This guide lays out that end-to-end schedule in order, drawing on the official REF 2029 timetable published by Research England.

    What is the REF 2029 timeline, in brief?

    REF 2029 is the UK’s next national research assessment exercise, following REF 2021. It was originally planned as “REF 2028” but was renamed REF 2029 in December 2023 after Research England extended the schedule to allow more development time for new assessment elements. Under the current timetable, published by Research England’s REF 2029 site and last updated 10 December 2025, final results are scheduled for publication in December 2029.

    The exercise unfolds in four broad phases: policy and panel-building (2023–2025), criteria finalisation (2026), submission (2027–2028), and results and data publication (2029–2030). Each phase carries distinct deadlines that institutional REF leads need to track separately, since panel criteria, output/impact eligibility windows, and submission logistics are set on different clocks.

    2023–2025: policy development and panel recruitment

    The groundwork for REF 2029 began years before any submission window opened. Research England published “Initial Decisions” in summer 2023, setting out the high-level design of the next exercise, followed by a consultation period. In December 2023, the funding bodies confirmed the exercise would be renamed REF 2029, with results due in December 2029 rather than the originally planned 2028.

    Panel and policy work then proceeded on a rolling basis:

    • Spring 2024 — advisory panel recruitment opened alongside a consultation on the REF 2029 Open Access policy.
    • Summer 2024 — Expert Panel recruitment began, and a web-based policy publication approach was introduced.
    • Autumn/Winter 2024–2025 — the Open Access Policy and Volume Measure guidance (with associated Codes of Practice guidance) were published.
    • Summer 2025 — draft “Contributions to Knowledge and Understanding” guidance was published, and full Expert Panel membership was announced ahead of the criteria-setting phase.

    In September 2025, Research England announced a pause to REF 2029 criteria setting and the publication of final guidance, stating that any changes to the exercise would be announced by December 2025. On 10 December 2025, REF 2029 resumed: weightings were confirmed, the People, Culture and Environment (PCE) pilot report and indicators report were published, and updated Strategy, People and Research Environment (SPRE) and Engagement and Impact guidance followed. SPRE replaces the PCE element trialled in the pilot and builds on the REF 2021 Environment component — the single most significant structural change carried into REF 2029.

    2026: panel criteria setting and final guidance

    2026 is the year sub-panels finalise the rules institutions will submit against. Across winter, spring and summer 2026, sub-panels complete onboarding and Expert Panels meet to develop detailed assessment criteria and working methods, building on the guidance sections published through 2025.

    Research England has confirmed there will be no formal public consultation on this final guidance and the Panel Criteria and Working Methods — a deliberate step to protect the compressed schedule after the 2025 pause. Final Guidance on Submissions and the Panel Criteria and Working Methods documents are scheduled for publication in autumn 2026, giving institutions roughly a year’s notice before the submission window opens. Anonymised REF 2029 Steering Group and Panel meeting minutes and papers covering January 2023 to September 2026 are planned for publication in December 2026.

    2027–2028: submission window and census dates

    The submission phase is where planning turns into deadlines. Research England’s schedule sets out:

    • Winter 2026/2027 — the special requests process (for individual staff circumstances affecting output/impact counts) launches.
    • Spring 2027 — the survey of submission intentions opens, giving institutions an early formal checkpoint to signal likely unit-of-assessment submissions.
    • Summer 2027 — the survey of submission intentions and the special requests process both close.
    • Autumn 2027 — additional recruitment for assessment-phase panels takes place, and the submission window opens.
    • Autumn 2028 — the final submission deadline falls, and the formal assessment phase begins immediately afterwards.

    Running alongside the submission window are the fixed eligibility (census) periods that determine which staff, outputs and impact activity can be submitted. Research England’s published parameters set the output eligibility period from 1 January 2021 to 31 December 2028, and the impact assessment period from 1 August 2020 to 31 July 2028, with underpinning research for impact case studies eligible from as early as 1 January 2008. These dates are distinct from the submission deadline itself: an output can be eligible for REF 2029 without the submission window for that unit of assessment yet being open, and administrators should track eligibility and submission-window dates as two separate schedules, not one.

    REF 2029: submission-phase milestones vs. eligibility periods
    Milestone or period Scheduled date What it governs
    Survey of submission intentions Spring–Summer 2027 Early signal of institutional submission plans
    Submission window opens Autumn 2027 Institutions may begin formal submission
    Output eligibility (census) period 1 Jan 2021 – 31 Dec 2028 Which research outputs qualify
    Impact assessment period 1 Aug 2020 – 31 Jul 2028 Which impact activity qualifies
    Underpinning research window (impact) From 1 Jan 2008 Earliest eligible research behind an impact case study
    Final submission deadline Autumn 2028 Last date to submit; assessment phase begins

    2029–2030: results and data publication

    Once submissions close in autumn 2028, the four expert main panels and their sub-panels assess outputs, impact case studies, and Strategy, People and Research Environment (formerly Environment/PCE) statements. Publication of REF 2029 results and quality profiles is planned for December 2029, the terminal date from which the exercise takes its name.

    Data and transparency publications follow in the new year: publication of submitted data and full final reports — including REF 2029 Steering Group and Panel meeting minutes and papers covering October 2026 to December 2029 — is planned for March 2030. Results inform the subsequent allocation of block-grant quality-related (QR) research funding across UK higher education institutions, in the same way REF 2021 outcomes shaped funding allocations from 2022 onward.

    Common REF 2029 timeline questions

    What period does REF 2029 cover?

    REF 2029 covers research outputs produced between 1 January 2021 and 31 December 2028, and impact activity between 1 August 2020 and 31 July 2028, underpinned by research eligible from 1 January 2008. The submission deadline falls in autumn 2028, with results published in December 2029.

    What are the key changes for REF 2029?

    The most significant change is the replacement of the REF 2021 “Environment” element and the piloted “People, Culture and Environment” (PCE) approach with a new Strategy, People and Research Environment (SPRE) element. Other changes include revised Contributions to Knowledge and Understanding guidance, updated volume measure rules using HESA data, and a renamed, delayed exercise (originally “REF 2028”).

    What is the REF 2029 strategy element?

    The Strategy, People and Research Environment (SPRE) guidance assesses whether an institution’s research environment enables diverse, excellent research, supports its people, and contributes positively to the wider research ecosystem and society. It builds directly on the REF 2021 Environment component rather than replacing it wholesale.

    Is it REF 2028 or REF 2029?

    It is REF 2029. Research England originally planned the next exercise as “REF 2028,” but in December 2023, following consultation, it confirmed an extension to the timing, renaming the exercise REF 2029 with results now scheduled for December 2029 rather than 2028.

    Implications for research administrators

    Because REF 2029 combines a compressed criteria-setting phase (following the 2025 pause) with a submission window that does not open until autumn 2027, institutions have a narrower practical planning window than REF 2021 offered at the equivalent stage. Research offices should treat the autumn 2026 final guidance publication as the trigger point for internal REF preparation — code of practice reviews, output and impact case study identification, and HESA data reconciliation — rather than waiting for the submission window itself to open.

    Tracking the output eligibility period (2021–2028) separately from the submission window (2027–2028) also matters operationally: outputs published early in the eligibility period may need portability and authorship documentation gathered well before any submission system opens, particularly where staff move institutions during the assessment cycle.

    What to watch next

    The next fixed points on the REF 2029 timeline are the autumn 2026 final guidance publication, the spring 2027 survey of submission intentions, and the autumn 2027 submission window opening. Given the September–December 2025 pause already shifted internal milestones once, institutions should monitor Research England’s published timetable directly for further updates rather than relying on a fixed date without a recheck.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • REF 2029 Census Date: No Single Date, New Rules

    REF 2029 has no single census date. Unlike REF 2021, which fixed staff eligibility to a single snapshot (31 July 2020), REF 2029 replaces the census-date model with a volume measure — an average full-time-equivalent (FTE) figure calculated from Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA) data across two academic years, 2025/26 and 2026/27. Institutions will submit a pool of research outputs sized to that average, rather than assigning outputs to named individuals on a fixed date.

    This is the single most consequential structural change in the next Research Excellence Framework (REF), and it changes how research offices plan staffing data, HR coordination, and output collection for the 2027–2028 submission window. This guide sets out what changed, why, and what to track.

    What happened to the REF 2029 census date?

    Every previous REF cycle fixed staff eligibility to a single date. REF 2021 used a census date of 31 July 2020: whoever held an eligible contract on that day was in scope, and institutions submitted named individuals against specific outputs.

    REF 2029 abandons that model entirely. As Research Professional News confirmed in August 2024, the four UK funding bodies reminded the sector that institutions “will submit outputs, not staff” for the next exercise, meaning there is no census date in the REF 2021 sense. The change was formalised through the REF 2029 volume measure policy, published via the official REF 2029 site (2029.ref.ac.uk).

    How does the volume measure replace the census date?

    The REF 2029 volume measure is an average FTE figure drawn directly from HESA staff data, calculated across two academic years: 2025/26 and 2026/27. This average determines how many outputs an institution submits per unit of assessment — it does not require any single-day snapshot of who was employed and does not require institutions to name individual authors against outputs.

    The mechanism decouples output volume from individual staff attribution. Institutions submit a representative pool of outputs for a discipline rather than a one-to-one mapping between named staff and named outputs — the core reform behind the “not staff” framing the funding bodies used in 2024.

    REF 2029 key dates and submission timetable

    The REF 2029 team last updated the official project timetable on 10 December 2025. The exercise itself was renamed from REF 2028 to REF 2029 following a December 2023 policy decision that extended the assessment period, with results now planned for December 2029.

    Milestone Planned timing
    Volume measure period (HESA FTE average) Academic years 2025/26 and 2026/27
    Final guidance on submissions and panel criteria published Autumn 2026
    Survey of submission intentions opens / closes Spring 2027 / Summer 2027
    Submission window opens Autumn 2027
    Submission deadline; assessment phase begins Autumn 2028
    Publication of results December 2029
    Publication of submitted data and REF 2029 reports 2030

    The exercise was paused in autumn 2025 during criteria-setting, and weightings were reconfirmed in winter 2025 before guidance drafting resumed. Research offices should treat the autumn 2027 submission opening and autumn 2028 deadline as the two hard planning anchors, since HESA data collection for the volume measure is already underway across both reference years.

    Who counts towards REF 2029 staff eligibility?

    Because there is no census date, eligibility now works through two HESA-derived staff categories that feed the volume measure calculation:

    • Teaching and Research contract staff with “significant responsibility for research” — the precise definition is expected in the autumn 2026 final guidance.
    • Research-only contract staff classified as independent researchers under HESA reporting.

    A separate, broader eligibility route applies to research outputs themselves. Institutions may submit outputs from any staff member with a “demonstrable and substantive link” to the institution — including technicians, research managers, and other research-enabling roles — provided the individual holds at least a 0.2 FTE contract and research activity forms part of that role. The output eligibility window has been provisionally indicated by institutional REF teams (for example, the University of St Andrews) as running from 1 January 2021 to 31 December 2028, pending final confirmation in the autumn 2026 guidance.

    Answer-first Q&A

    What is the cut-off date for REF 2029?

    There is no single cut-off date for staff eligibility in REF 2029. The volume measure instead uses an average FTE calculated from HESA data across academic years 2025/26 and 2026/27. The output eligibility window is provisionally indicated as 1 January 2021 to 31 December 2028, pending final guidance.

    What are the key changes for REF 2029?

    REF 2029 replaces the outputs element with Contribution to Knowledge and Understanding (55% weighting) and the environment element with Strategy, People and Research Environment (20% weighting). Individual staff are no longer submitted; institutions submit representative output pools sized by the HESA-derived volume measure instead.

    Is it REF 2028 or REF 2029?

    The exercise is officially REF 2029. It was originally planned as REF 2028, but a December 2023 policy decision extended the timetable, and results are now scheduled for publication in December 2029 rather than the earlier target year.

    What publications are eligible for REF 2029?

    In-scope longform output types provisionally mirror REF 2021 definitions: published books, book chapters, edited books, and scholarly editions. Final panel-specific output criteria, including any changes to eligible formats, are expected in the autumn 2026 Final Guidance on Submissions and Panel Criteria.

    Implications for research offices

    The shift from a fixed census date to a two-year HESA average changes what research offices need to track and when. Priority actions:

    1. Verify HR/HESA data accuracy for 2025/26 now — errors in this reference year directly shape the institution’s volume-measure baseline and cannot be corrected retroactively once the period closes.
    2. Track the autumn 2026 Final Guidance publication for confirmed definitions of “significant responsibility for research” and “independent researcher.”
    3. Prepare Code of Practice documentation ahead of the survey of submission intentions (spring–summer 2027), which will require institutions to state early submission plans.
    4. Map research-enabling staff (technicians, research managers) against the 0.2 FTE and “demonstrable and substantive link” output-eligibility test, since this is a new, broader eligibility route absent from REF 2021.

    Institutions with strong research administration functions are better positioned to absorb this shift, since research administration teams already coordinate the HR, HESA, and output-tracking data flows that the volume measure depends on. The removal of a single census date does not reduce the compliance burden — it redistributes it across a longer two-year data-integrity window, with less room to correct late-discovered errors.

    With autumn 2026 guidance, spring 2027 submission-intention surveys, and the autumn 2028 deadline now fixed on the official timetable, research offices have a defined runway to align HESA reporting, staff contract classification, and output-tracking systems before the volume measure calculation window closes.

  • REF 2029 Impact Case Studies: What’s Changing From REF 2021

    REF 2029 impact case studies (ICS) keep the same three-part narrative template as REF2021 but tighten the evidence standard: a hard 2,200-word cap replaces the old five-page limit, the 2* quality threshold for underpinning research is removed, the smallest units may now submit just one ICS instead of two, and funded-research submissions must add ROR and ORCID identifiers. These changes were confirmed in Research England’s official REF 2029 guidance, published 10 December 2025, and apply to submissions covering the 2020–2028 impact period.

    An impact case study is the structured evidence record — summary, underpinning research and details of impact, corroborated by external sources — through which a REF submitting unit demonstrates the reach and significance of a specific, research-derived benefit to the economy, society, culture, public policy, health or the environment beyond academia.

    Contents

    What has actually changed for REF 2029 impact case studies?

    REF 2029 preserves REF2021’s basic architecture — impact case studies scored on “reach and significance,” submitted through the same three-section narrative — but revises four load-bearing rules. Word count moves from an approximate page limit to a hard 2,200-word cap. The 2* research-quality threshold for underpinning research is scrapped entirely. The minimum case-study count for the smallest units drops from two to one. And funded ICS must now supply Research Organization Registry (ROR) and ORCID identifiers alongside grant data.

    Research England frames this as evolutionary, not structural: the guidance states it wanted “to limit the overall degree of change for this exercise.” Institutions that ran REF2021 will recognise the process shape; the real shift is in what counts as eligible evidence.

    How does the REF 2029 word limit compare with REF2021’s five-page rule?

    REF2021 capped impact case studies at five pages, with indicative (non-binding) word counts per section. REF 2029 replaces that with an explicit, enforced ceiling: 2,200 words across the three substantive narrative fields — Summary of the impact, Underpinning research, and Details of the impact — entered directly into the REF Submission system rather than uploaded as a formatted document.

    Research England’s own analysis found REF2021 submissions typically used around 2,000 words within the five-page allowance — so the 2,200-word ceiling is a modest increase on observed practice, not a real-terms cut, despite the headline shift from “pages” to “words.”

    Element REF2021 REF 2029
    Format limit 5 pages (indicative word counts) Hard 2,200-word cap (3 narrative sections)
    Suggested section split Not formally specified Summary ~100 / Underpinning research ~600 / Details of impact ~1,500
    Underpinning research quality threshold 2* (“recognised internationally”) Removed — must only meet the REF definition of research
    Minimum ICS for smallest units (<9.99 FTE) 2 1 (2 optional)
    References to research Maximum 6, no word limit Maximum 6, no word limit (unchanged)
    Corroborating sources Maximum 10 Maximum 10, max 5 named individual contacts (unchanged)
    Funded-research data fields Funder, grant number, amount Adds ROR identifier and ORCID for each named researcher

    How many impact case studies does each unit need to submit?

    The number of required ICS still scales with a submitting unit’s volume measure (FTE), but the smallest bracket now has a choice. Units below 9.99 FTE may submit either one or two ICS — Research England “encourages” two but permits one where submitting two would place undue pressure on individual staff in very small units.

    • Up to 9.99 FTE: 1 or 2 ICS (submitter’s choice; REF2021 required 2)
    • 10–19.99 FTE: 2 ICS
    • 20–39.99 FTE: 3 ICS
    • 40–59.99 FTE: 4 ICS
    • 60–89.99 FTE: 5 ICS
    • 90–119.99 FTE: 6 ICS
    • 120–169.99 FTE: 7 ICS
    • 170+ FTE: 8, plus one further ICS per additional 50 FTE

    Submitting fewer than the required number results in an “unclassified” grade for each missing case study. Units cannot submit more than the required number — institutions must select their strongest evidenced examples rather than represent the full spread of unit activity.

    What’s different about the evidence and underpinning research standard?

    The single biggest substantive change is removal of the 2* quality threshold. Under REF2021, underpinning research had to meet a quality bar “recognised internationally in terms of originality, significance and rigour.” REF 2029 guidance states this requirement was “burdensome, exclusive of valuable local research and impact and limiting to the diversity of the underpinning research” — it now only needs to satisfy the general REF definition of research.

    REF 2029 also explicitly invites narrative discussion of engagement strategies and responsible research practices, addressing feedback that units were previously reluctant to describe engagement-led impact because REF2021’s template did not name it as a valid evidence category, even though panels rewarded it when present.

    Corroboration rules are largely unchanged: institutions may cite up to 10 external sources and name up to five individual contacts, and URLs may only verify claims already made in the text — panels will not follow links to gather supplementary evidence.

    Does the REF 2029 impact case study template change?

    Structurally, no — REF 2029 “will maintain the REF 2021 submission template structure for ICS.” The three narrative fields, the references section (max six outputs) and the sources-to-corroborate section (max ten) carry over unchanged. Two additions are new:

    • Diverse contributor recognition: an optional, unassessed field to name students, engagement professionals and research-technical staff who contributed to the impact — published in the ICS database with consent.
    • Expanded funded-research data: units must supply the funder’s ROR identifier, ORCID per named researcher, funding programme, grant number, grant amount (GBP), formal partners and the impact’s country/nation, where research was externally funded. This supports funder post-assessment analysis, not panel scoring.

    Eligibility windows reset for the new cycle: impact must occur between 1 August 2020 and 31 July 2028, underpinned by research first made public between 1 January 2008 and 31 December 2028. Unlike REF2021, there is no COVID extension window — impacts submitted under REF2021’s optional COVID window cannot be resubmitted except as context for a continuing case study.

    Answer-first Q&A

    How many impact case studies are needed for REF 2029?

    The number is set by a unit’s volume measure (FTE), from a minimum of one for units under 9.99 FTE up to eight-plus-one-per-additional-50-FTE for units of 170 FTE or more. REF2021 required a minimum of two; REF 2029 allows the smallest units to submit just one.

    How much is a REF impact case study worth?

    Impact carries a 25% weighting in the REF quality profile. Per a 2023 Research Professional analysis cited by the LSE Impact of Social Sciences blog, a single 4-star ICS from a very large Unit of Assessment could be worth over £2 million in QR funding across a REF cycle — illustrating why evidence quality, not volume, drives strategy.

    What is an impact case study for REF?

    It is a structured written submission, entered via the REF Submission system, describing a specific research-derived effect on the economy, society, culture, policy, health or environment. Each case study cites underpinning research outputs and external evidence corroborating the claimed reach and significance.

    What is the REF 2029 definition of impact?

    REF 2029 defines impact as an effect on, change to, or benefit for the economy, society, culture, public policy, health, the environment or quality of life beyond academia — including harm reduction — occurring in any geographic location. Purely academic impacts on research knowledge are explicitly excluded from this element.

    What this means for research administrators

    The practical effect is a lower barrier to impact stories built on locally significant or applied research that would previously have failed the 2* threshold, plus more room to credit engagement work and professional-services contributors often invisible in REF2021 submissions. The trade-off is stricter word discipline — 2,200 words is a hard, system-enforced limit, not a page guideline that can be stretched with formatting.

    Institutions should build ROR and ORCID capture into impact-tracking workflows now: these identifiers become mandatory for any ICS underpinned by externally funded research, and retrofitting historic funding records close to the deadline is a known source of REF-cycle administrative burden.

    REF 2029 guidance was published in draft form from December 2025 and is scheduled for formal finalisation during 2026, so submitting units should track Research England’s published change log rather than treat any single module as final until then.

  • Research England QR Funding vs Project Grants

    Research England QR funding is the block grant that Research England distributes to English universities based on the quality and volume of their research, as assessed by the Research Excellence Framework (REF). Unlike a competitive project grant, it is not tied to a specific proposal: institutions receive it as an annual lump sum and decide internally how to spend it, which is why it underpins long-term research capacity rather than individual projects.

    Quality-related (QR) research funding is the UK’s main formula-based block grant for research, allocated by Research England to higher education providers (HEPs) in England as part of the four-nation “dual support” system. For 2025 to 2026, Research England distributed £1,987 million in total QR funding — the largest single component of its £2,731 million combined research, knowledge-exchange and capital budget, according to Research England’s own grant-allocations basis publication (reference RE-P-2025-04).

    What is QR funding, and why does it exist?

    QR funding exists to give universities unrestricted, recurrent income for research rather than money tied to a single project. Research England, the Department for the Economy Northern Ireland, Medr (Wales) and the Scottish Funding Council each operate an equivalent block grant, and all four bodies use REF outcomes to inform their formulas. This “strategic institutional” funding sits alongside — not instead of — competitive grants from UKRI’s seven Research Councils, forming the UK’s dual support system for research.

    Because QR allocations are anchored to a periodic exercise rather than annual bidding rounds, they change slowly. Research England has said it is “seeking to maintain stability” in QR investment while REF 2021 outcomes remain the reference point ahead of REF 2029.

    How does Research England calculate QR funding?

    The QR formula weights each institution’s REF-assessed research quality and volume, then applies subject cost weightings and a London weighting before converting the result into cash. Mainstream QR — the largest QR element — totalled £1,303 million for 2025-26, including a London weighting calculated at 12% of mainstream QR, per Research England’s technical guidance for QR and HEIF allocations 2025 to 2026.

    QR is not a single payment. Research England’s 2025-26 budget breaks it into five funding streams:

    QR funding element 2025-26 budget What it funds
    Mainstream QR (incl. London weighting) £1,303m Core research quality/volume, weighted by REF outcomes
    QR research degree programme (RDP) supervision fund £344m Postgraduate research student supervision
    QR charity support fund £219m Overheads on charity-funded research
    QR business research element £114m Overheads on business-funded research
    QR funding for National Research Libraries £7m Five designated national-importance research libraries

    Source: UKRI, Research England grant allocations basis 2025 to 2026 (RE-P-2025-04), Table C. The Research Excellence Framework itself is run jointly by the four UK funding bodies roughly every three to seven years and involves more than 1,000 expert assessors across 34 subject-based panels.

    QR funding vs competitive project grants: what is the difference?

    QR funding is allocated by formula to an institution; competitive grants are awarded by peer review to a named investigator’s proposal. QR arrives every year regardless of whether a particular project succeeds; a project grant ends when the funded work is complete. This distinction is the whole point of dual support — one stream buys stability, the other buys targeted innovation.

    Feature QR funding (Research England) Competitive project grants (e.g. UKRI Research Councils)
    Allocation basis Formula, driven by REF quality and volume Open competition, peer review of a specific proposal
    Recipient The institution (HEP) The named investigator/project team
    Duration Recurrent annual block grant Fixed project term
    Use of funds Institutional discretion Restricted to approved project costs
    Application required No — based on REF and other formula data Yes — competitive proposal submission

    Institutions typically use QR’s flexibility for costs competitive grants will not cover: bridging funding between grants, early-career research time, shared equipment, and preparing REF impact case studies. The Russell Group has described QR as playing “an essential and unique role in achieving breakthrough research.”

    What changed in the funding formula for 2025-26 and 2026-27?

    The core QR formula did not change for 2025-26: Research England confirmed “no changes to the funding methods or weightings for any other elements of QR funding” beyond one reversion. The QR research degree programme supervision fund returned to its usual calculation method in 2025-26, after a temporary adjustment had applied in 2024-25.

    • Strategic institutional research funding (SIRF) review — the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) has asked Research England to review the robustness and value of flexible formula-based research funding on an ongoing basis running to 2030.
    • Transparency pilot — from autumn 2025, Research England began systematically collecting evidence on how institutions use their QR allocation, a shift reported by Times Higher Education in September 2025 as universities being “asked to explain how they spend millions of pounds received in quality-related (QR) funding.”
    • Knowledge-exchange formula adjustment — a related Research England formula stream, the Higher Education Innovation Fund, introduced a £500,000 allocation cap for new entrants in 2025-26; from 2026-27, HEPs previously constrained by that cap receive their full calculated allocation without the annual increase modifier applied.

    None of these changes alter the headline QR total, but together they signal closer scrutiny of how block-grant funding is spent — a planning-relevant shift for institutions relying on QR discretion.

    What does this mean for institutional research capacity planning?

    Because mainstream QR is re-based on REF outcomes rather than annual performance, institutions can forecast it several years ahead — but that stability window narrows as REF 2029 approaches and unit-level results begin to shift. Research administrators planning multi-year investments (research-space commitments, technician posts, early-career fellowships funded from QR) should treat the current REF 2021-derived allocation as a plateau, not a permanent baseline.

    The transparency pilot adds a second planning consideration: institutions should expect to document QR spend against outcomes, not just receive and allocate it internally. Research administration teams coordinating REF impact case studies, research culture initiatives and postgraduate supervision funding are best placed to own this evidence trail before it becomes a formal reporting requirement.

    Common questions about QR funding

    What is QR funding?

    QR funding is Research England’s main block grant for research, allocated by formula rather than by application. It is calculated primarily from Research Excellence Framework (REF) quality and volume scores, and unlike a project grant, it is not tied to specific research aims — institutions decide how to use it.

    How much is QR funding worth?

    Total QR funding was £1,987 million for the 2025-26 academic year, of which £1,303 million was mainstream QR, £344 million funded postgraduate research supervision, and the remainder covered charity- and business-funded research overheads and national research libraries, per Research England’s published 2025-26 grant-allocations basis.

    How does QR funding work?

    Research England converts each institution’s REF-assessed research quality and volume, weighted by subject cost and location, into a cash allocation paid annually. There is no application process; allocations shift only when an institution’s underlying data — such as REF results, postgraduate numbers, or research income — changes relative to the sector.

    What is the Research England Policy Support Fund?

    The Policy Support Fund is a separate strand of Research England’s strategic institutional funding, budgeted at £29 million for 2025-26, that supports universities in developing policy-related impact case studies and engagement ahead of future REF exercises — distinct from, but administered alongside, core QR funding.

    Outlook: what to watch before REF 2029

    QR funding will keep functioning as the UK’s most predictable research income stream in the near term, but three trends will shape how much institutional autonomy it retains: the ongoing SIRF review through 2030, the new spend-transparency expectations, and the approach of REF 2029, which will eventually re-base every institution’s mainstream QR allocation. Institutions that build evidence of QR outcomes now — rather than waiting for reporting requirements to formalise — will be better positioned when the formula next resets.

    For research administration teams tracking how funder policy changes intersect with institutional compliance and reporting obligations, monitoring Research England’s annual grant-allocations publications alongside broader research administration developments remains the most reliable way to anticipate formula shifts before they land.