{"id":62,"date":"2008-07-08T07:20:14","date_gmt":"2008-07-08T14:20:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.meanboyfriend.com\/overdue_ideas\/?p=62"},"modified":"2008-07-08T07:20:14","modified_gmt":"2008-07-08T14:20:14","slug":"research-excellence-framework","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.meanboyfriend.com\/overdue_ideas\/2008\/07\/research-excellence-framework\/","title":{"rendered":"Research Excellence Framework"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Graeme Rosenberg (REF Pilot Manager) from HEFCE presenting on this.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve sat at the back with the only other blogger (afaik) in the room as we both run low on battery, and the only power sockets are next to the projector &#8211; which means I can&#8217;t hear so well \ud83d\ude41<\/p>\n<p>Some of this may be a&nbsp; repetition of stuff I blogged at the earlier REF event at Kings College London. Following consultation the REF is going ahead with 2 key changes &#8211; assessment for all subjects will include some metrics and some peer-review process, and timescale lengthened.<\/p>\n<p>The key features of the REF are:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Unified framework for research assessment and funding\n<li>Robust research quality profiles for all disciplines\n<li>Emphasis on identifying and encouraging excellent research\n<li>Greater use of metrics than at priesent &#8211; including bibliometrics &#8220;for all disciplines where these are meaningful&#8221;\n<li>Reduced burden on HEIs<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Timetable:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Up to spring 2009 &#8211; bibliometrics pilot and other development work\n<li>Spring\/Summer 2009 &#8211; consult on all main features of the REF\n<li>By Sept 2009 &#8211; decide on main operational features of the framework<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Use of bibliometrics:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Bibliometrics to be used in those disciplines in which they are meaningful &#8211; alongside other data and information\n<li>Interpretation by expert panels\n<li>To be based on citation rates per paper &#8211; not journal impact factors &#8211; and taking account of worldwide norms for the field, year of publication, and document type\n<li>Results to be aggregated for substantial bodies of work; presented as a citation profile<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>About to run a pilot &#8211; starting imminently, with 22 institutions involved. This will look at a number of issues:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Which disciplines?\n<li>Which staff and papers should be included? Universal or selective coverage? Are papers credited to the research or the institution?\n<li>How to collect data &#8211; and the implications for institutions (looking at Web of Science and Scopus for bibliometric data, but need institutions to at least identify the papers that &#8216;belong&#8217; to them)\n<li>Which citation database(s)? (as mentioned looking at WoS and Scopus &#8211; they have different coverage, and continue to develop &#8211; what is best for the pilot, may not end up being the best for the REF, or may change over time &#8211; need to pick the best one at the time)\n<li>Refining the methods of analysis &#8211; including normalisation fields and handling self-citation\n<li>Thresholds for the citation profile\n<li>Interpretation by expert panels<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Last point is key &#8211; allows flexibility in terms of what numbers are presented, as long as the expert panel know what is included and what is not (e.g. this could be a way of dealing with the self-citation issue)<\/p>\n<p>It will be possible to compare the results to the 2008 RAE and investigate discrepancies and why they arise<\/p>\n<p>The pilot institutions are:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Bangor\n<li>Bath\n<li>Birmingham\n<li>Bournemouth\n<li>Cambridge\n<li>Durham\n<li>UEA\n<li>Glasgow\n<li>Imperial\n<li>Institute of Cancer Research\n<li>Leeds\n<li>LSHTM\n<li>Sussex\n<li>&#8230;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The timetable is:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>May-Jun 08 &#8211; Select HEIs\/contractors\n<li>Aug-Oct 08 &#8211; Data collection\n<li>Nov 08 &#8211; early 09 &#8211; Data analysis\n<li>Spring 09 &#8211; Pilot results<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Participating institutions will be asked to:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Provide as much data as available on all researchers and publications eligible for the 2008 RAE (in relevant disciplines)\n<li>To be matched to Web of Science initially, and supplemented by additional records\n<li>We will evaluate issues of completeness and accuracy and seek feedback from the institutions\n<li>JISC project to document the data systems requirements<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Some issues for institutions:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>As REF developed need to assess the potential impact on the sector (accountability burden, equal opportunities and perceived behavioural incentives)\n<li>Information management\n<ul>\n<li>Populating database for the initial bibliometrics exercise (Looking at Australia who are moving in a similar direction, and have had a requirement for collecting information on their published research outputs for some time)\n<li>Ongoing management of bibliographic data for multiple purposes<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<li>Management information and internal resource allocation\n<li>Relationships between citation data coverage and publication outlets &#8211; where are the gaps in WoS and Scopus?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>For more information <a href=\"http:\/\/www.hefe.ac.uk\/research\/ref\">http:\/\/www.hefe.ac.uk\/research\/ref<\/a> and\/or join the REF-NEWS mailing list (details at the URL given here).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Graeme Rosenberg (REF Pilot Manager) from HEFCE presenting on this. I&#8217;ve sat at the back with the only other blogger (afaik) in the room as we both run low on battery, and the only power sockets are next to the projector &#8211; which means I can&#8217;t hear so well \ud83d\ude41 Some of this may be [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-62","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.meanboyfriend.com\/overdue_ideas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.meanboyfriend.com\/overdue_ideas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.meanboyfriend.com\/overdue_ideas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.meanboyfriend.com\/overdue_ideas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.meanboyfriend.com\/overdue_ideas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=62"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.meanboyfriend.com\/overdue_ideas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.meanboyfriend.com\/overdue_ideas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=62"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.meanboyfriend.com\/overdue_ideas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=62"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.meanboyfriend.com\/overdue_ideas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=62"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}