Anyone else left feeling a bit flat (or worse) by REF?

[questconnect]

I hate the whole thing. Do most of us? My big contribution was meant to be impact, but I have somehow only just discovered that we don't actually get told how specific case studies are ranked. This seems like a slightly cruel mind game - our UofA didn't do that well, although one case study got 4. So now I just speculate ... was it mine? Or probably not! Or should I really be saying who cares?! (*I do care. A bit. It took quite a bit of effort.)

Yeah. Feeling depressed. Worried our Dept is going to be ... I'm not even sure... put in measures or whatever they might do ... our scores went up overall but we dropped a lot in the rankings. Our UofA not even mentioned in the 'hey we did great' email from the Uni Admin, which is worrying, as last time around we were one of the stars. I know after last time there was a lot of reorganisation of poorly performing units, and I don't want to face that.

Yes - same for us @murmuration. Not mentioned at all in the Uni PR or the internal emails. And during today's School meeting, much talk of little choice in impact case studies, implying that the ones they had to submit were a bit rubbish. No recognition of people who had submitted case studies (with I should say very little institutional support). Clearly, this is not all just about me but it is a bit depressing. I hope things are OK in your department.

@questconnect - thanks. I won't even know about the rest of the Dept for a while, as I'm WFH today and even when I go in am very isolated in a building with few people in it and my office is even hard to reach in that! We do have a full Dept meeting in about two weeks, so I guess I'll see people there.

Our HoD did send out an email saying thanks and he was proud of us all, so that is nice. We do tend to be supportive of each other. Sorry your department isn't even saying thank you!

Was just popping in to see how everyone was doing re the REF. I was heavily involved in all REF/RAEs since 2001, but was shifted sideways in 2016 so only got to set up the beginning of our planning for the REF2021.

I'm in an RG, and in a department that is fairly high-powered research wise, although the REF never quite captures this. It's a beast and brutal.

But - and this may be an unpopular opinion - I am not totally condemning of it. It is brutal, but it has raised the game in the humanities - when I think of some of the things my colleagues 20 years ago counted as 'research-active' compared with now ...

I had colleagues (none of them women with young children by the way) who thought that 2 or 3 conference papers over 5 years was sufficiently 'research-active'. And here was I, and other actual research-active colleagues, busting our guts to publish, get grants etc. There were disparities everywhere. As brutal as it is, the REF has evened out this sort of disparity.

But it really should NOT be used as a performance management tool for individuals. REF results are for a unit/department.

Although it's a system with HUGE flaws - imagine if we gave feedback in this way? "Oh, we're assessing you as a seminar group, not as individuals. And we won't give feedback on individual pieces of work so you can see what you could do better next time."

Interesting @ExMachinaDeus I see what you are saying. I think like all these things there are pros and cons, depending a bit probably on whether you are on the winning or losing side.

In our School, I would say we have many 'under-performing' people who are on research and teaching contracts and contribute very little in the way of research (and arguably aren't always that great at teaching)!

On the one hand, I don't want an environment where people are penalised or even sacked and my own research outputs aren't that great! But on the other, it's incredibly frustrating when some people are on the same or higher grades than staff putting in a lot more effort and with more to show for it. That is probably just very poor management.

I think on impact - my special bugbear today - there are some areas where impact is more available and/or more provable and I am not sure how far that is recognized. But my real problem is that I've bust a gut over my impact case study and I will never know what it was actually awarded. It does feel demoralizing - but maybe it would be worse if I did know the score!

We came out better for Impact than anything else, but as you say individual scores aren't known. We also all have to submit to one panel that isn't suitable for half of us, discipline-wise so that's always a dogs dinner. Anyway, uni putting a brave face on it all, done well enough but not outstandingly. I'm just glad the farce is over for a couple of years when it all starts again...

Was a bit amusing in my office this morning. 2 lecturers pouring over the results. Their main comments (rants) were about disingenous & false some of was. Manipulated and "playing the system." There's some happiness domain that basically our dept. scored badly on. Cue many "Well Done!" emails from management. Despaired of by the lecturers.

I'm not REFd so kind of get to ignore it all, but I did contribute to a case study. I'm keen to see how that was rated. Impact case results not out until June.

@MedSchoolRat so there will be a granular result of the impact cases?

joy... i was hoping to dodge that bullet :/

putting the damned case together with v little input was hell, i had hoped to never see it again.

I think this is a huge problem with the REF: there's never precise enough feedback. We did quite well (although certain London institutions seem to be favoured in my field) but we had more 1* outputs than we thought. But which ones? No-one tells you.

Friends of mine on REF sub-panels say they are looking at the unit as a whole, not evaluating individuals. BUT then they are grading individual outputs, written by individuals.

It's a contradiction.

saying this, i don t think it s desirable to know who to single out for their 1* - i have no doubt my toxic colleagues would be all over it like a pack of vulture, finding out who to rip to pieces

one of these special people was trying to find out which of our 3 impact in our tiny UoA "was the weak one"

I feel the same, it's a major shit show. Like we don't need more pressures. It does not accurately assess the work I do. It's like measuring apples with bloody oranges. I hate it.

I hear you OP. I worked as an impact specialist for a significant chunk of the last REF round. I devised, designed, and executed an ambitious programme of public engagement. The grading for the UoA shows that of the four ICSs three were graded highly and one was a 2*. I really hope that’s not mine because a lot of time and effort went into the design of the programme of interactions, data collection and analysis, as well as linking it to historic activity to tell a compelling story. It was a significant chunk of my time for 4 years!

It sounds as though some departments may be misinterpreting impact scores. Impact cases are scored on a half point scale - 4, 3.5, 3, 2.5,..

Hence if you submit two impact cases and get 50% 4 and 50% 3 you can't tell whether these were scored as 4, 3 or both scored as 3.5. Of course if you submit three and get 66% 4, 33% 2 you can deduce they must have been two 4s and one 2, but in most cases you just can't deduce the individual scores.

saying this, i don t think it s desirable to know who to single out for their 1* - i have no doubt my toxic colleagues would be all over it like a pack of vulture, finding out who to rip to pieces

Yes, take your point @Disacappointment it could turn into an appalling disciplinary situation. But it's just sooooo frustrating that we have to play "Guess the 4* essay"

well, same toxic colleagues are very confident and have zero self doubt: they have got to be the 4* - who else!?

😂 😂 😂 😂

We got all 4 and 3 across our outputs, impact and environment but are being made to feel adequate because not enough of it was 4. The burning shame of only being "internationally-excellent" . . . we must do better next time, apparently as we're not high up enough in the rankings (despite the fact that half the submissions in our UoA are from entirely different kinds of departments who don't research in the same discipline area at all, and so not even vaguely comparable).

Oh that's really shit @GCAcademic 4 and 3 across the board is brilliant!

Hi all, thanks for the responses. I am having such a despondent day today. Does anyone else also feel a bit lonely as an academic? I know I am now on the verge of terrifying self-pity, so brief pause here to acknowledge my privilege and many other things that make me feel very fortunate.

But in terms of career - I have very poor networks with other academics, just haven't managed to build them, and nearly all my work is single-authored - including my ambiguously-assessed impact case study. The thing about that case study is that it came at a personal cost. (In my research I spend a lot of time criticising a very powerful interest group and they don't like me very much - at times it can require a bit of courage, I guess. I know this sounds a bit poor me and everything but that is absolutely not recognised by my institution which provides precisely no support, practical or otherwise.)

I'm also just about to sign off on my sole-authored book which I am terrified about (it's not good enough, needs tighter editing, arguments not strong enough, or particularly original - in short, I am pretty sure it's going to get slaughtered by other academics, if it's noticed at all). Aaargh.

Maybe this is just ... work. And probably a subject for another thread. I'm just having one of those days where academia and all this REF bollocks seems quite high personal stakes for fairly limited reward!

Also don't discount the effects of the last 2 years. The January to April teaching term of 2021 was one of the hardest of my life. Dealing with angry anxious students in dark January - a low point. And I had to meet a book deadline with very little access to libraries etc etc.

I seem to have forgotten how to do my type of research, and I realise it's because I usually spend a lot of time ferreting around in libraries & archives. Can you use this summer to re-connect with the fundamentals of your research and what you enjoyed doing when you started? That's what I'm trying to do. Quite deliberately working in libraries & archives is what's helping for me.

Yes @exmachinadeus, good point. And also to think about why I do the research that I do and reconnect. I have a couple of years ahead of me without too much teaching so should be a good time to do that.