Portability and REF2021

Earlier this year HEFCE (Higher Education Funding Council for England) asked for views on their plans to change the way REF works for 2021. For the full UKRSA response please see Adina's blog.

One of the key objections to HEFCE's proposals concerned the implementation of non-portability of outputs "Stern proposed that when staff move from one institution to another the credit for outputs they have authored should not move with them. Previously outputs were characterised as ‘portable’. The ‘originating institution’ lost all credit for the outputs, even if the author left the day before census date after working there for many years."

Whilst HEFCE acknowledge that the majority of respondents felt that this would discriminate against Early Career Researchers, who rely on the currency of portable papers to secure tenure-track positions, they have decided to go forward with plans to end portability.

UKRSA submitted the following response to the latest HEFCE announcements and request for further discussion:

We, along with the majority of respondents, opposed the proposals, citing our specific concern about the detrimental effects on early career researchers. Contrary to HEFCE’s statement, we believe these issues do undermine the strength of the central arguments supporting the proposed changes to the REF, particularly where applied to ECRs. By signalling that the REF proposals will not be amended to take these points into account, we are concerned that HEFCE are not considering early career researchers’ and others’ valid and strong arguments against the proposals.

It is the view of the UKRSA that current proposals continue to place the most vulnerable members of the research community at the greatest disadvantage. Without a doubt the best option for dealing with these concerns would be to implement transition proposal one, whereby both the host institution and the receiving institution are able to keep the outputs of ECRs. We agree that it may be unfair to the institution hosting the research to lose that output in times of the researcher leaving, but it is rarely possible for early career researchers to stay on at any one institution for long enough to maintain a whole REF cycle.

This said, we question whether there might not be a further option to maintain the portability and co-ownership of outputs for ECRs as we move past the current REF cycle. Portability will always be an issue for ECRs and this seems to be the fairest way to deal with the issue in the long term.

UKRSA looks forward to working with HEFCE on this matter in the future and would appreciate further discussions with the research community. If you have anything to say on this, please do comment below, or email us at ukrsavitae@gmail.com or tweet us @ukrsavitae