Jonathan Piotrowski
Head of REF Policy
The upcoming Research Excellence Framework (REF) 2029 has ignited many conversations, with the concept of output portability being one of the most prominent. At its core, this debate grapples with fundamental tensions: fairness to individuals and the purposes of institutional assessment; incentives, researcher mobility, equitable research environment, differential impacts on certain types of research and on research diversity; and the cultures and drivers for research careers.
Reflections
REF 2029 was founded on a programme of evaluation and engagement. One that I greatly admire (but that I can’t take credit for!). The conversations, consultations and evaluations that have shaped REF 2029’s development reflected deeply on the role of the REF in the sector and the unintended impacts that it can have for people and their careers. That thoughtful work presents an opportunity for creating lasting positive change, perhaps even more urgent now, given current challenges in the sector.
While the desire for simple solutions is understandable, the reality is that “portability” is a deeply nuanced issue, where any single approach inevitably involves trade-offs. Months (and months…) of engagement and detailed deliberation with people from a wide range of roles, career stages, institutions, and parts of the research landscape, have underscored that there’s no perfect answer that will comprehensively address every concern.
I want to share the whole of that conundrum with you. It is important that this conversation and thinking is transparent, because the issues are complex, and we know that consequences will be felt differently across the sector. Perspectives and decisions have been difficult to balance.
The REF assesses organisations, not people
To appreciate the shift in REF 2029, it’s important to understand how it diverges from past practices: in REF 2021, institutions submitted research outputs produced within the assessment period by staff employed at a specific point in time, whereas REF 2029 assesses research supported by an institution over the whole REF period.
We’ve been calling this shift ‘Decoupling’, and it means moving the REF further away from assessing individuals, even indirectly, and as close as it can get to its true purpose of assessing how well organisations are supporting research excellence. These changes reflect the core purposes of REF 2029 – to inform the allocation of research funding, provide accountability for public investment, and offer insight into the health of research in UK institutions. In practice, decoupling means that the REF volume measure and lists of submitted staff will not be the sole determinants of which outputs are eligible for submission. For REF 2029, the link between an institution and an output is a key consideration. The institution must have been responsible for supporting the research that led to the output.
REF 2029 shifts our focus away from the individual and towards the environment where that output was created and how it was supported. This change in perspective is essential for two key reasons: first, to gather the right evidence to inform funding decisions that enable institutions to support more excellent research and second, to fundamentally recognise the huge variety of roles and outputs that contribute to the research ecosystem, including those whose names may not appear as authors and outputs that extend beyond traditional journal publications.
Why decouple at all?
It’s critical to emphasise that the move towards “decoupling” was never about claiming ownership of researchers’ outputs. Researchers retain their CV, their publications, and their expertise — these remain fully portable in every professional and academic sense for job applications, promotion, and grant funding applications. The core motivation is to minimise the REFs ability to exert undue influence on people’s careers. To achieve this, institutional funding (remember, QR funding does not track to individuals or departments) should follow the institutions that have genuinely provided and invested in the environment in which research is successful. Environments that recognise the collaborative nature of research and the diverse roles involved, rather than simply rewarding institutions positioned to recruit researchers to get reward for their past output.
The individual perspective
The impact on individual researchers is a central point of discussion. It has been argued that non-portability could disproportionately affect Early Career Researchers (ECRs), those in precarious employment, or those facing redundancy, potentially hindering their ability to compete in the job market. However, I struggle with a broader question: In a system where portability is maintained, and in today’s increasingly precarious environment, who truly benefits? I cannot see that portability is protective, especially in difficult times. It creates incentives beyond the potential of the individual. What of fairness, recognition, and the future of inclusive research culture?
The equality dimension
While portability may appear on the surface to offer fairness for individuals, it can amplify deeper systemic inequalities across the research system. Importantly, concerns around ECRs, redundancy, and precarious contracts are valid and deeply felt and were raised in sector consultation and REF policy deep dives. But the solution cannot rest on portability alone, particularly where it is advocated for limited groups. We have heard that ECRs or redundant staff should be protected or have portability, however while this is attractive it is just not possible where there is no reliable indicator or way of knowing who these individuals are, with no widely accepted definition recorded consistently. Therefore, to advantage some groups will also disadvantage others – those with caring responsibilities, those who have experienced career breaks, research environments where REF-style research outputs are not necessarily the norm (such as business) and mobility and porosity of careers between sectors.
Misaligned purposes
Protecting mobility and career development requires broader sector reform, not a REF model that inadvertently allows institutions to capitalise on outputs they did not enable. The rules of the REF must reflect that it is an assessment of institutional environments.
This shift does not deny individual authorship or agency. Researchers retain their CVs, publications, and intellectual credit. But for the purposes of REF, outputs should be submitted only where the institution significantly enabled the work promoting a system that values sustained investment, research culture, and inclusive practices over strategic positioning.
The complexities of non-portability
While there are strong arguments for moving away from portability, it’s equally important to acknowledge the potential complexities and unintended consequences. Concerns have been raised by researchers and within the sector about the potential for non-portability to impact the diversity of research and the health of certain disciplines and institutions. There are concerns that non-portability could disincentivise certain types of research and outputs, as certain research formats and practices take significant time to generate the research output. There is a risk that HEIs may choose to disinvest in these disciplines and forms of research output and practice if they cannot include them within their submission after investing in an individual during a REF time window.
This is not just a technical debate. For many researchers REF outputs have become more than a measure of research quality; they are a form of professional currency. The decision to move away from output portability can feel, understandably, like a loss of agency. But REF can best serve the sector by supporting a research ecosystem where institutions are incentivised to invest in and sustain inclusive, collaborative environments. That means we must measure how research is enabled, not only where it lands on a CV.
Looking ahead
The REF team and panels are carefully considering the diverse perspectives and concerns raised by the sector. We remain committed to working collaboratively to refine the REF 2029 framework and ensure it supports a vibrant, equitable, and high-quality research ecosystem. REF has always been, at its core, a collective exercise. It assesses the contribution of institutions to the research ecosystem. At the same time, we must recognise that individual researchers are not interchangeable cogs in a system: they generate the ideas, produce the outputs, and carry those outputs as part of their professional identity. The REF 2029 model reflects this balance. Outputs are submitted by institutions because REF funding supports institutional research capacity, but this does not erase the authorship, ownership, or career value of those outputs to individual researchers. The challenge – and the opportunity – is to ensure that institutions recognise and reflect that shared stewardship, honouring both the people and the systems that make research possible.