By Catie Lichten, Penny Sarchet and – 27th November 2013

Caffeine, cola and colds: research managers from and the Universities of , Kent and Sussex talk about the final week before the Research Excellence Framework’s submission deadline of 29 November.

Kent Looking to life after REF

Across the university there must be 50 or 60 people working on the REF, but centrally we are a very small team: there’s the pro vice-, the director of research services, part-time assistants and me.

Impact has been bemusing. It will be good to get through this first phase, take stock and think about what we may do differently next time. What we’d really like is for the Higher Funding Council for England to grade our case studies so that we know which ones we did well and which ones we didn’t do so well.

We may also want to structure how we do things slightly differently in future, because the university has increased in size quite a bit, so I think next time we might try to make it a bit easier on ourselves centrally—maybe by bringing in more resources.

My memory is full; I’ve got real problems remembering all of the detail. I’ve got a hideous cold but I’m quite looking forward to life after the Kent REF preparations—as a panel secretary in the assessment phase. I will be a gamekeeper turned poacher.

Clair Thrower, research information manager at the , was talking to Penny Sarchet.

Edinburgh Evidence for impact

This is my third research assessment. One of the biggest challenges has been finding evidence of the impact claimed. We are already putting processes in place to ensure that such evidence is captured as it’s happening, rather than looking for it after the event, as was the case for a number of our case studies submitted to REF2014.

The inclusion of outputs that we expect to be published in December 2013 has also been difficult. It’s a game of risk as you’re trying to figure out if something will appear in time or if you should replace it. Sometimes the researcher, especially if they are early in their career, won’t have an additional high-quality output, so what to do then is tough.

I don’t drink coffee but my consumption of diet cola and sandwiches increased. I go to the same shop and they now know my sandwich order by heart without my even having to ask.

Manya Buchan, head of research policy and planning at the University of Edinburgh, was talking to Catie Lichten.

Sussex Small things matter

We’re making 23 submissions plus one joint submission. We’ve got 118 documents and I’ve nearly finished the final read through. So I’m fresh in a jaded sort of way. I’ve read and signed off nearly 90 per cent of the documents, and 76 per cent are uploaded. Some are really good, and the impact cases are interesting to read compared with the environment statements.

Most of our issues have been technical ones. If you submit a certain type of output, you need to have a certain set of information. For example, if you can’t make a digital object identifier work, you get an error message. So then you need a PDF instead. If those small things aren’t fixed, the submission doesn’t validate and you cannot submit.

Every institution has a deadline for delivery of any physical copies of outputs: we have to deliver a box of outputs to Bristol on 18 December. These are things we can’t send electronically, such as books, music and performances. Fortunately we have no sculptures—I recall a previous Research Assessment Exercise when one university had to decide how to make a sculpture available.

Ian Carter, head of research services at the , was talking to Adam Smith.

Aston Nudging the latecomers

It’s largely been a smooth operation, but in some areas a degree of weariness is setting in. Trying to get academics to stick to deadlines is always tricky, and some are better at it than others.

One of the main problems is that, as the REF is so important, the longer people have to look at it the more they want to amend, tinker with and revisit things that we thought had been agreed. The people still polishing their submission are probably those we would have predicted, but thankfully we allowed for some slippage in the timetable.

It has helped that our vice-chancellor has taken a close interest in the REF. We’ve found that giving the date for her review has been quite helpful in focusing people’s minds.

Will I be taking a break from the REF? I think I’ll be giving myself two or three years off.

Sally Puzey, head of research support at Aston University, was talking to Penny Sarchet.