UK Conservative Shadow Universities Secretary Promises REF Delay If Tories Win Government. (January 15, 2009)

Having reported yesterday that Britain's Labor government is wrestling with how to introduce impact into its Research Excellence Framework (REF) Time Higher Education (THE) now has this view from David Willetts, the Conservative Shadow Universities Secretary: "We propose delaying the REF by up to two years to establish whether a sound and widely accepted measure of impact exists. If there is a measure that is methodologically robust and widely accepted by the academic community, we would adopt that.... [We] do not believe that the current proposals pass those two tests. Unless the review is able to establish a measure that does, we would not include impact in the REF."

Mr Willetts also made the personal observation that he was in favour of delaying the implementation of the REF because it would allow academics to spend more time on research and teaching.

Commenting on the the matter James Ladyman, professor of philosophy at the University of Bristol and the organiser of a petition against the impact proposals said, perhaps somewhat acidly: "There is a measure for the allocation of research funding that is 'methodologically sound and accepted by the academic community' - namely submitted work as assessed by expert peer reviewers."

Overall, THE found that even those who do support the view that research impact has a place in the evaluation of proposals, were in favour of careful and critical determination of how to develop the methodology, but without proposing specific approaches for doing so.

And THE also notes that "there has been a groundswell of opposition to the new requirement that scholars detail the potential impact of their proposals in research council grant applications".