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REF

This page covers a range of resources that focus on the Impact portion of the Research Excellence Framework.

Writing Impact Case Studies

Top scoring impact submissions from every UoA

Stephen Kemp has very kindly pulled together the top 5 scoring submissions for every UoA (in 2021, Stephen's website also has the list REF2014) for impact. Taking a look at these examples for your UoA will add to the your understanding of what enabled them to get those high scores and, when compared to known 4* cases (potentially in other UoAs), how they could have been improved. If you only want to look at four-star case studies, then tale a look at the full list categorised by UoA

What made a four-star impact case study in REF2014?

Reichard, B., Reed, M.S., Chubb, J., Hall, G., Jowett, J., Peart, A., and Whittle, A., Writing impact case studies: a comparative study of high-scoring and low-scoring case studies from REF2014. Palgrave Commun 6, 31 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-020-0394-7. This journal article is the largest comparison of high and low scoring case studies from REF2014. This blogpost covers the main findings from the paper. This paper is likely to be still relevant for REF2028 as we are not expecting many changes to the rules around case studies.

The A-Z of impact case studies

Sally Brown at Southampton and does a great job of pulling together the advice from lots of disparate literature (academic and grey) into this brilliant poster of the A-Z of impact case studies. The poster has the references Sally used as inspiration. She also crowdsourced suggestions, for inclusion, via Twitter (as was). Sally has made it available via her ResearchGate profile. Again this poster is likely to remain relevant for REF2028.

Evaluating impact

Mark Reed's Fast Track Impact podcast has a number of episodes (numbers 36 - 43) that focus on evaluation and evidencing and is a great starting point.

REF2029

We are still in the early days of the development of the rules and guidance for REF2028. In fact, all the material that has currently been released is stored on the JISC website under the Future of Research Assessment programme. The latest published update was on 7 December 2023. This annouced that the results of the next REF will be published in December 2029.

The likely changes related to case studies are the numbers required as FTE increases will be different and the requirement for underpinning research to be predominantly two star may be removed. The December update says more work will be done on the numbers of case studies required.

Also in the impact section of the REF, an impact narrative will be reintroduced (a version of this existed in REF2014 but was dropped for REF2021). Interpretations of this are starting to emerge - see this Twitter / X thread by Mark Reed.

There are larger changes in other areas of the REF, such as the Environment part will become the People, Culture and Environment. The consultation on this ended on 1st December 2023 with a response not likely until end of Q1 2024 (a guess).

REF2021 Database of case studies

Nearly all of the case studies submitted to REF2021 (a case study could be deemed confidential and therefore not published) can be searched and downloaded from the online database. When you look at case study make sure you look at what its rating my have been by taking a look at the REF results for that submitting institution and Unit of Assessment.

REF2014 Database of case studies

Nearly all of the case studies submitted to REF2014 (a case study could be deemed confidential and therefore not published) can be searched and downloaded from the online database. When you look at case study make sure you look at what its rating my have been by taking a look at the REF results for that submitting institution and Unit of Assessment.