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Transparency statement for main and sub-panel recruitment 

The information submitted here will be used to support the process for appointing main and sub-panel members to the Research Excellence Framework (REF) 2029.  

This information includes personal data and special categories of personal data such as names, contact details or Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) data.  

We will process your information to facilitate the following related to the panel recruitment:  

  • process your application 
  • contact you about your application 
  • produce and publish aggregated statistics to support the monitoring of equalities information as part of the public sector equality duty 
  • make decisions about who will be invited to serve on REF panels   

Our lawful bases for collecting or using personal information are ‘to provide services to carry out our public task’, and ‘explicit consent’ as outlined in the UK GDPR. All applications data will be deleted within 30 days of announcing appointed panels.  

Collected data will be viewed by members of staff from UKRI (Research England), the Scottish Funding Council, Medr (Wales’ Commission for Tertiary Education and Research), the Department for the Economy, Northern Ireland and external colleagues employed to support this work. The aggregated and anonymised data will not be made available to people who are making decisions about panel appointments.   

All personal data provided to UKRI in connection with main and sub-panel recruitment will be managed in line with the current UK data protection legislation (Data protection policy – UKRI). Further information on how we use personal data, and how you can exercise your rights as a data subject, can be found in UKRI’s privacy notice

UKRI reserves the right to publish and share anonymised summarised information with stakeholders. To request further information on data processing related to the REF panel recruitment, please email admin@ref.ac.uk.