Britain's Research Excellence Framework Delayed. (July 10, 2010)

The UK Minister for Universities and Science, David Willetts, yesterday announced a one-year delay in the introduction of its Research Excellence Framework (REF) in order to review further the impact requirement.

The Department for Business, Innovation and Skills' media release states: "In a speech to the Royal Institution, he said that the REF will be delayed by one year so that the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) and its devolved counterparts can review whether there is a way of assessing impact that is methodologically sound and acceptable to the academic community. This will allow full use to be made of the pilot impact assessment exercise which concludes this autumn."

Mr Willetts in his speech to the Royal Institution said: "I appreciate why scientists are wary, which is why I'm announcing today a one-year delay to the implementation of the Research Excellence Framework, to figure out whether there is a method of assessing impact which is sound and which is acceptable to the academic community. This longer timescale will enable HEFCE, its devolved counterparts, and ministers to make full use of the pilot impact assessment exercise which concludes in the Autumn, and then to consider whether it can be refined."

The minister also told his audience that he wants to ensure that the UK develops the intellectual capacity to react to scientific advances however or wherever they arise and capitalise on them through home-grown research programmes and business initiatives, and added: "Some 95% of scientific research is conducted outside the UK. We need to be able to apply it here – and in advanced scientific fields, it is often necessary to conduct leading-edge research in order to understand, assimilate and exploit the leading edge research of others... The challenge is to use and improve existing methods for making the best use of our excellent science base to drive sustainable economic growth."

 Summarising the situation ScienceInsider's Daniel Clery writes:

In the funding of research at universities, the U.K. government has two funding streams: project grants that are awarded to researchers and funds for departmental overheads that are given directly to universities. Which departments get this extra funding and how much was formerly judged by a process called the Research Assessment Exercise (RAE). Every few years, researchers would submit their best publications, and RAE peer review panels would assess them and give departments a grading. The aim of REF was to replace this cumbersome process with something more systematic.

Currently the timetable is set for the REF to premiere in 2014 and be applied to funding from 2015.