“The REF is moving in a direction that most of the sector is happy with, but there is still much at stake in the fine-tuning. Some 23 years after its first incarnation, the research assessment exercise has been finally laid to rest. But not before it gave us months of speculation, endless debate, the agony of who was to be entered and who was to be left out, game-playing, wrangles over calculations of the number of staff entered, profiles and, of course, the delightful pockets of excellence. It was a hellishly difficult time, but we were dealing with the devil we knew. Now it is time to move on, and the RAE’s successor, the research excellence framework, is currently being fashioned for implementation in 2014 …” (more)
[Ann Mroz, Times Higher Education, 14 May]