REF review ‘will focus on diverse outputs and research culture’

"However, Tim Softley, pro vice-chancellor for research and knowledge transfer at the University of Birmingham, said he would be concerned about any plan to reduce the importance attached to research published in highly cited journals." Of course he would be. Senior management is afraid of loosing the stick with which they have got used to wack the pesky academics with (i.e. individual performance tragets to manage our "excellence" derived from the REF). “There is nothing wrong with trying to publish a high-quality publication in a prominent journal where lots of people will read it,” said Professor Softley" Sorry, that may be true in science, but in my field rarely anyone reads the "top journals" (read US journals) as they have become so technical and obscure that these highly "excellent" articles increasingly have lost their scholarly relevance. In my field, the really exciting and novel stuff is published in niche and specialist journals not the mainstream ones. But hey, let us continue with this one-size-fits-all REF rubbish (e.g. four publications are nothing to talk about in some fields but a great achievement in others).

The problem we need to fix first and foremost is how we define excellence. The peer review model is, as many have previously pointed out, flawed and broken. The model of academic publishing in specialised journals (whether high impact or not), among many other deficiencies pushes knowledge into siloes, resulting in duplication and mutually unintelligible language that hampers interdisciplinarity. Starting from a definition of excellence that better measures social value would lead to a very different kind of assessment and, I would argue, the natural downgrading of the journal article as the prime referent of research excellence.

Having a positive research culture and good publication record are not mutually exclusive. I don't believe my colleagues and I are suddenly going to stop bothering about doing good science because the focus of REF has shifted. A positive research culture could lead to better publications as team science seems to work well for producing high quality, innovative scientific outputs.

As I have said before and will say it again - it doesn't matter what policies REF makes because mock REF conducted privately by all universities will be an opportunity for REF reviewers to subvert these policies with impunity.

" mock REF conducted privately by all universities" - this is wastage of tax payers money of the highest order. Can people not see it??!! What purpose does it serve? Trying to second guess that the panel might do..utter nonsense. The only purpose is either to put more pressure on staff and/or to decide what and how much to buy in to submit to the REF. Mock REF reviews are now also used internally by universities for progression and promotion decisions too and god knows with what levels of transparency and oversight. All of this game playing must end. It only encourages short-termism which has made academia sadly what it is today. Academics have been teaching and researching for centuries before the alphabet soup was invented and as I have said many times, the best universities are inspite of any REF not because of it.