Impact in REF 2029 – in favour of the bigger picture

REF 2028 has turned into REF 2029, following a decision by the UK’s higher education funding bodies to delay the national research assessment exercise – the Research Excellence Framework – by 12 months.

This is surely good news for university impact teams, who find themselves with a valuable additional year to work out how best to respond to changes to the way the societal impact of their institution’s research is measured.

From our perspective, the most significant change is the reintroduction of a structured, explanatory impact statement for each disciplinary unit of assessment that ‘can recognise and reward approaches to maximising the impact of research’, as a complement to the usual narrative impact case studies.

The idea is to capture, in greater detail than in previous exercises, the wider contribution that research activities make to society and the economy – and the processes in place to support researchers to maximise the benefits, beyond academia, of their work. The impact statement is likely to also need to demonstrate, for the first time, the ‘rigour’ of universities’ outward engagement, with the aim of putting processes on a more equal footing with outcomes.

We’ll be helping the institutions that we work with to navigate this new requirement. So, what are the key implications of this change – and how might the sector benefit in the long run?

• Universities will need to capture a much richer and broader picture of research impact for each disciplinary unit of assessment. The case-study-only approach in REF 2021 meant that some units could prioritise a handful of easier-to-evidence ‘winners’, while stories of wider partnership building, influence at a local and regional level, and softer, nuanced impact often went untold. This is an opportunity to develop a more inclusive approach to impact.

• Across each unit, universities will have to demonstrate that a carefully considered – and continually evaluated – engagement strategy is in place to support academics who want to maximise the impact of their research. Rather than relying on a few individual researchers to develop impact case studies, units will need to show how academic engagement across diverse areas of research is facilitated by institutional knowledge exchange mechanisms and professional services colleagues, and anchored by institutional approaches to ethics and EDI (a point emphasised by Professor Mark Reed). Overall, this can democratise the resourcing of impact, where every route to impact is seen to have ‘value’ in REF terms, not just a select few case studies.

• Each unit will need to implement processes for how they coordinate the mapping of their engagement over an eight-year period, manage impact project pipelines, ensure different impact capture platforms (e.g. Researchfish, Pure) are speaking to each other, and provide researchers with support to manage relationships with external partners and beneficiaries. Appropriate resourcing for these tasks at a unit level should help to lessen some of the administrative and project management burden that falls on academic researchers.

• This ‘bigger picture’ approach to impact will encourage closer integration between impact, enterprise, policy and public engagement teams in those universities where a joined-up approach is under development. This is good news for the development of stronger impact cultures. There also promises to be greater connection between different elements of the REF, as impact statements will feed into, and overlap with, the new People, Culture and Environment component.

• A deeper understanding and awareness of a unit’s activities should lead to new opportunities, e.g., co-produced research funding proposals with external partners, new ideas for internal impact funding, stories for institutional media channels. This should help decouple impact from a REF-only view, where a more proactive, strategic approach to engagement and impact delivers benefits well beyond a research assessment exercise.

Yes, the reintroduction of disciplinary-level impact statements – with supporting quantitative and qualitative data – looks likely to increase resourcing requirements and workloads for impact teams. But, if managed well, new processes, introduced in response to these requirements, can build healthier cultures around engagement and impact across the sector.