Britain Looks to Australia's RQF as a Model for Assessing Research Impact. (January 14, 2009)

The Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) in replacing the Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) for the next round of evaluation of public university research funding, the Research Excellence Framework (REF) has commissioned the consultancy RAND Europe to meaningfully evaluate the impact of academics' research.

RAND Europe concluded that the approach taken by Australia's Coalition government under John Howard to assessment research impact on the nation's commonweal provides "a promising basis" for the REF.

The Times Higher Education Supplement's Zoë Corbyn notes: "The Research Quality Framework proposed measuring impact on a three-point scale based on peer review of the portfolio of work from 'research groupings' of five or more people. The report says the RQF 'was abandoned for political not feasibility reasons ... (and) provides the "best fit" against the emerging criteria for REF'".

However, RAND Europe follows that evaluation with the acknowledgement that it could place a major burden on institutions and create "undesirable perceptions and incentives".

Ms Corbyn's write-up then quotes the report as placing conditions on the HEFCE which from a practical viewpoint would appear all but impossible to achieve:

• it must be clear about its "strategic intent" in assessing impact;

• it must spell out the effect of more concentrated research funding;

• it needs to define impact and timescales clearly;

• it must have a firm idea of the units it wants to assess;

• it must acknowledge the challenge of attributing impact;

• it must assess the administrative burdens involved;

• it must clarify the role of research users.

And lastly the report recommends that REF panels be given "some flexibility" in quality, impact and environment weightings. The HEFCE has suggested it wants impact to be given a 25% weighting.

Ms Corbyn was told by an HEFCE spokesman that a pilot exercise under way at 29 universities was taking account of the issues raised in the report and the responses to the REF consultation, which closed last month.