The UK¡¯s funding councils have stepped back from plans to require universities to submit all academics on research contracts to the next research excellence framework.

A key recommendation of Lord Stern¡¯s review of REF 2014 was that all research-active staff should be submitted and the funding councils proposed in December to implement this by requiring?universities to include all staff on research-only or teaching and research contracts in the 2021 exercise.

It was argued that this would?give a more accurate picture of a university¡¯s research strength than the previous REF, in which institutions were accused of ¡°game-playing¡± in the selection of staff for submission. There were also claims that non-selection led to academics being ¡°stigmatised¡±.

A consultation on the proposals is due to close on 17 March but the funding councils have?already conceded that contractual status may not be the best way to identify research-active staff.

ÁñÁ«ÊÓƵ

The funding councils have acknowledged that?many universities, particularly those in Scotland, are required to use a model contract which includes both teaching and research duties, regardless of the work actually expected of the academic.

Instead, the funding councils are considering drawing up an ¡°evidence-based definition¡± of what it means to be research active, leaving it to the universities and individual academics to agree upon who falls into which category.

ÁñÁ«ÊÓƵ

In a , David Sweeney, the Higher Education Funding Council for England's director of research, education and knowledge exchange, writes that this will likely lead to ¡°consistently very high submission rates in the research-intensive universities¡±, rather than ¡°variations seen by some as game-playing¡±. In universities that focus on teaching and knowledge exchange, there might be ¡°much lower submission rates reflecting that fewer staff are hired with a primary success criterion being world-leading research outputs¡±.

Under such a scheme, universities would be required to ¡°develop and publish the process they used to establish agreement with their staff on their ¡®research-active¡¯ status¡±, he writes.

Dr Sweeney told?Times Higher Education that the funding councils still intended that ¡°100 per cent of research-active staff will be submitted¡±.

¡°The only question is how you define research-active staff, and we propose doing that from a contractual basis,¡± Dr Sweeney said. ¡°That has received a good bit of a push-back, which I understand, so now we¡¯re...floating something else,¡± Dr Sweeney said.

ÁñÁ«ÊÓƵ

Dr Sweeney added that, if the consultation responses ¡°suggest a better way¡± of identifying research-active academics, the funding councils were prepared to consider that also.

john.elmes@tesglobal.com