British Academy: The UK's National Academy for the Humanities and Social Sciences
BRITISH ACADEMY COMMENTS ON CHANGES TO ASSESSING RESEARCH “IMPACT”
The British Academy notes the release by the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) of Decisions on Assessing Research Impact outlining plans for the 2014 Research Excellence Framework (REF) on behalf of the UK funding bodies (1 March 2011).
In response to this new document, the Academy reaffirms the views it expressed in its original submission to HEFCE on this subject (Dec 2009), and in particular it urges the UK higher education funding bodies to take the following observations into account.
USE OF THE TERM “IMPACT”
The document notes: “Case studies may include any social, economic or cultural impact or benefit beyond academia that has taken place during the assessment period.” This goes some of the way to meeting the British Academy’s concern that an explicitly broad definition of “impact” is needed.
However, the benefits of work in the humanities and social sciences (and indeed many other subjects) are not limited to the specific impact of specific pieces of research, but also have numerous other pathways. The Academy therefore urges panels, in drawing up their criteria, to make reference to notions such as “public value” or “public benefit” in addition to or instead of “impact”.
IMPACT WEIGHTING
Although the decision to lower the impact weighting from the proposed 25% is sensible, the British Academy is concerned that the compromise figure of 20% remains too high. This is because impact assessment is in its infancy, and there are some obvious hazards in the assessment process.
The outcome of the 2014 REF should not be over-dependent on the new “impact” element. Significant sums of Quality Related (QR) funding will be allocated on the basis of the REF exercise; and research in humanities and social sciences is particularly dependent upon QR funding. The British Academy continues to believe that a weighting of 15% for impact would have been wiser for this developmental stage, and urges that no commitment be entered into at this point about raising the percentage for future exercises.
SUBJECT-SPECIFICITY
The HEFCE document notes that, “REF panels will be invited to explain in more detail how these [impact assessment] criteria will be applied in ways that are appropriate to their disciplines.” It is essential that the criteria for the subject-specific panels are appropriate to the disciplines in question. If the criteria are not sensitive to the specifics of each discipline, the research community will lose confidence in the exercise.
-ENDS-
For further information, please contact:
Kate Turnbull, Press and PR Manager: 0207 969 5263 / k.turnbull@britac.ac.uk
EDITOR’S NOTES
• The British Academy, established by Royal Charter in 1902, champions and supports the humanities and social sciences. It aims to inspire, recognise and support excellence and high achievement across the UK and internationally. For more information, please visit www.britac.ac.uk