One scholar’s crusade against the REF

Fully agree with this assessment--similar exercises are fashionable in The Netherlands as well. However, I cannot help thinking that many of the accusations would equally apply to journal's peer review assessments as well as to the origins of the metrics that professor Sayer would like to see used, if I understand him correctly, at least for the social sciences (including economics, i.e. my own discipline). Generally, all these assessments and ranking exercises help forcing academic endeavours into mainstream channels. We have been able to witness the price society pays for marginalising challenges to mainstream thought as recently as 2008 when the theories, approaches, policies and 'innovations' that were embraced as top-notch research caused an unprecedented financial and economic crisis.

All very valid comments but I recall the same arguments about the RAE before last and, when the then government said ok we'll replace it with just metrics, the academic community rose up in defence and insisted on some form of peer review. Plus ca change....

Here's my ref story. The story of a REFFail and REFugee: http://sonofsar.blogspot.fr/2014/12/my-ref-story.html