Interview help- REF - Academic perspective

[WheresLarry]

I am applying for a job in which I will be required to assist with the administration of the university REF submission. I will do all the reading I can but I am wondering if anyone would be willing to share the process of REF submission from an academic perspective. What was required of you as an academic?

Thank you anyone for your help.

Does anyone even know the next REF rules, yet?
It will be lots of admin, OP. Lots of chasing people & keeping track & understanding the 'rules'. Emails & spreadsheets & organising some kind of internal peer-review process (I imagine).

Depends heavily on the subject.

Depends heavily on your role in your department.

You may have little involvement in REF, apart from selecting your own papers, or you may have to understand the rules in detail to do internal peer review and select submissions from your department, write the submission, prepare impact case etc.

Thank you for the replies. No one knows what the submission process or rules will be like for the next REF so I suppose it will be more about showing off my organisational skills.

Well, it's not entirely true to say that people don't what the process or rules will be: the Stern report is likely to be (mostly) accepted and the rules concerning portability of outputs, definition of research active, notions of impact are beginning to be clarified.

I disagree that REF is about organisational skills - REF is about being able to judge strengths and weaknesses of outputs, writing a coherent argument concerning researching environment.

No one knows what the submission process or rules will be like for the next REF

Not quite true. HEFCE have started to announce the next framework.

I'll tell you what REF is like as a research head: I lost a year of research time in its prep & admin.

But if I were to imagine the perfect REF support from a professional services/admin colleague, here are some (very selfish ) ideas:

If you are dealing with academic staff & REF, the main thing is to understand the pressures, and understand about the nature of academic research. Basically do the opposite of anything Andrew Adonis does (have a look at his utterly ignorant tweets about academics being lazy).

Be sympathetic to the hours of research work we do that professional staff rarely see. Don't say that we're "off" or "on holidays" when we're stewing in an archive all August.

Be prepared to talk to academics about their research and the impact of their research, and engage in a dialogue about how their research can be presented to interested parties outside the academy.

Basically, YOU need to be committed to the presence of research in a university and research as fundamental to a good university, and to try to understand the relationship between research, and teaching.

Thanks you both for the additional information. I didn't realise that Sterns recommendations were most probably going to be accepted, that's useful to know.
Thank you for your detailed viewpoint weyhay

Did your institutions hold workshops/presentations to discuss the requirement's of the uni REF submission? Did you have a time frame to follow or were you just made aware of the deadline?

Apologies for all the questions, this is a big opportunity for me and I want to grab it with both hands and given it my all.

Did your institutions hold workshops/presentations to discuss the requirement's of the uni REF submission? Did you have a time frame to follow or were you just made aware of the deadline?

Of course!

I've been to 2 this year, and one last year, plus monitoring of my unit's research every 6 months.

From that question, frankly, it sounds as though you have very little experience in how universities manage the REF internally. At my place, we've been preparing since the last lot of results came out ie January 2014.

My twice yearly1 to 1 meetings with every research-active colleague in my unit always look at how they are positioned re their REF submission & impact case studies. Probationary conditions include REF-submissible publications graded internally at 3*

There is a whole office at my place which has REF prep as a work stream for about 50% of their workload, and up to 100% in the submission year (2020).

And so on ...

Well that's true, actually i have no experience in how universities manage the REF internally. Preparing the department for the REF will be a requirement of the role I am going for and I need to outline my plans for doing this so am looking for experiences from people that may have already gone through it.

Start with the understanding that we're now only 3 years out from submission. And that Stern is pretty much going to be implemented: average of 3 submissions per fte submitted; min of 1, max of 5; all on research contracts to be submitted; around 1 Impact CS per 10 fte. And so on.

I'd be asking:

• How are you going to collate information & keep records?
• How are you going to work with the Director of Research to draft the REF5 environment template, which will now include impact?
• How are you going to support staff writing Impact Case Studies?
• Will you be involved in organising internal or external expert review of submissions?
• What do you know about Open Access?

If this is gobbledegook, get reading on the HEFCE website! And the research websites of the department you're applying to, as well as looking at the general research pages of that university.

Lots of very useful information weyhay. Will get looking at the HENCE website. Thanks.

*HEFCE

Good luck! I work with some very expert professional services staff who try hard to make academics' work on REF as smooth as possible.

The whole REF exercise sucks up precious resources. I wish they'd just ditch it.

Feels like I have been hearing forever that Stern is dead-cert to be the rules.. so why isn't that official yet? What is still being decided?

I can't help but think that what they really want from OP is for her to produce 4 papers. That's 100% all they mean by "administration": will she get 4 papers published with her name on them.

Rumour is that systematic reviews won't be allowed to be 4 in next REF (max 3). Matters to me b/c SRs are my bread & butter. Better put skates on & get some more in-demand skills.

What are systematic reviews? I'm a historian & haven't heard of the term before.

Systematic reviews are more of a health thing as far as I'm aware.

What is still being decided?

A lot of details, related to gaming of REF.

For example: portability of outputs. Ending portability between institutions prevents universities from hiring people 1 day before REF and then claiming all their outputs for REF. But it also makes it harder for people to move, if they can't take their outputs with them, thus encouraging university management to refuse promotions on the grounds that staff can't find other jobs. One needs to define portability to balance these issues.

Similarly: minimum number of outputs, definition of REF eligible staff. RG universities outside Oxbridge are terrified that Oxbridge would be allowed to submitting all their teaching fellows with zero outputs, with compensating large numbers of outputs from their star researchers. They want all staff submitted to have at least one output to prevent Oxbridge gaming the system.

Everyone entered will be required to submit one item minimum, maximum of 5, and on average, 3; and there's a complicated system re portability for ECRs and those moving institutions.

Still won't stop the REF stealing about a year of my research time, though.

Sorry, max. of 6 items.

Hello, OP here. Just wanted to say thanks for the tips from everyone, the interview and presentation went well and I got the job. Thanks everyone

Yay! Congratulations!