Fears have been raised that universities will find it easier to submit outputs from sacked academics, in turn making it harder for these scholars to find new jobs, under changes to the Research Excellence Framework (REF).
In an open letter to REF director Rebecca Fairbairn?, representatives from the UK’s three main associations for English studies explain how new rules further breaking the link between researchers and outputs will “disproportionately” affect arts and humanities researchers who have already been impacted “in a time of crisis in our sector”.
Under proposed rules for REF 2029, universities will be able to submit outputs for any research-active staff as long as they were employed during a two-year census period up to September 2027, even if the researcher subsequently leaves that institution.
In REF 2021 institutions could claim staff outputs as long as they were employed on the census date of 31 July 2020, even if they had subsequently been made redundant, a rule?criticised by some academics?at the time.
But there are fears that reforms could increase this kind of behaviour, prompting a call to allow researchers to submit outputs for both past and present employers within the census period.
In the open letter signed by Clare Lees, director of the Institute for English Studies, Gail Marshall, chair of University English, Jennifer Richards, chair of the English Association and Katherine Baxter, chair of the English Association’s higher education committee, the associations highlight the “risks of decoupling staff from outputs without allowing for portability”.
“The decoupling of researchers from outputs was first introduced in REF 2021 to address a perception that wealthier institutions were ‘gaming’ the system, ie, by poaching staff and their outputs,” explains the letter.
“In these uncertain times, there is now a worry that REF 2029 will enable a different injustice: that institutions can hold onto the outputs of staff they have sacked, while making it harder for them to gain new academic employment because they are no longer linked to the work they created.”
The letter calls for “due consideration [to be] given to portability so that past and present employers within a census period may each claim a link to a researcher’s published outputs (within an agreed number of years following publication)”.
While the problem of portability applies to all researchers, explains the letter, the issue is “experienced differently” by arts and humanities researchers because “the kind of outputs that are valued…are often long-form” and might be “the product of many years of deep research”.
With these long-form outputs tied to their old employer, an arts or humanities researcher will be more affected than a scientist who is more likely to produce many more research papers, often as part of a larger research team, explains the letter.
With many arts and humanities researchers often making a “personal financial investment” to continue their research, “such circumstances make it feel odd to decouple arts and humanities researchers from their outputs, and worse, egregious when that decoupling means those outputs cannot move with the researchers who made them”, says the letter.
“For these reasons, we are urging the REF team to reconsider very carefully the implications of a blanket decoupling of researchers from outputs for Main Panel D disciplines to ensure no harm is done,” it concludes.
In a statement a Research England spokeswoman said REF 2029 policy was “under active development and will be published in spring/summer 2025”.
“The UK’s higher education funding bodies are aware of the concerns in the sector and the REF team is engaging widely as we develop this policy,” she added, noting however, that funders had “committed to fully breaking the link between individual staff members and submitted outputs in the initial decisions [on REF 2029] and we are working with the sector to develop the policy around this.”
