Equality and diversity in the REF
The UK funding bodies are committed to supporting and promoting equality and diversity in research careers, and strongly encourage institutions to submit the work of all their excellent researchers to the REF. The REF team is assisting the funding bodies in a number of ways to take forward this commitment:
- We have provided an 'Equality briefing for REF panels'.
- 'Panel criteria and working methods' sets out the arrangements for enabling staff whose circumstances have constrained their ability to work productively throughout the assessment period, to be returned with fewer than four outputs without penalty in the assessment. These arrangements will be applied consistently across the exercise.
- 'Guidance on submissions' sets out requirements for institutions to develop, document and apply a code of practice on the fair and transparent selection of staff for their REF submissions. Institutions have been sent an 'Invitation to submit codes of practice on the selection of staff for the REF'.
- The 'environment' element of submissions will include evidence about how the submitted unit promotes equality and diversity.
- The selection rates of staff for the REF will be monitored and analysed at sector level.
- The Equality Challenge Unit (ECU) provide good practice and training materials to support institutions, including worked examples of complex individual circumstances.
Equality and Diversity Advisory Panel
We have established an Equality and Diversity Advisory Panel (EDAP) to advise the REF team, the REF panels and the funding bodies on the implementation of these measures throughout the submission and assessment phases of the REF.
The terms of reference and membership of the group are set out below:
TOR and membership
[ Download TOR and membership as Adobe PDF 55K | Download TOR and membership as MS Word 89K ]
Background information
The equality measures for the REF were developed in consultation with the REF Equality and Diversity Advisory Group. The measures built on a review commissioned by ECU of the process to promote equality and diversity in the 2008 RAE, and took account of a quantitative analysis of staff selected for the 2008 RAE.
We have also considered the potential equality implications of using citation data as an indicator of research quality in the REF.
- Equality and Diversity Advisory Group and terms of reference (Adobe PDF 17K)
- ECU report on the process to promote equality and diversity in RAE2008
- HEFCE report on the selection of staff for inclusion in RAE2008
- HEFCE report on the effect of using normalised citation scores for particular staff characteristics.
Last updated 30 January 2012