Embedding REF into Core Activities

All institutions have an IT system to manage HR and therefore the processes to track staff are already in place. The management of the fields in the REF pilot not covered by most HR systems is relatively easy to manage and institutions should not experience any major difficulty in amending their existing recruitment and leaving procedures to gather the missing data.

The degree to which the collection of research outputs is embedded into an institution's operational model will probably be dictated by a pragmatic assessment of the cost/benefit of investing in a publications database. The costs would be the purchase and maintenance of the IT system, plus putting in place procedures to routinely collect the data. The benefits are the availability of additional management and operational information, increased accuracy of research output tracking and the time and effort savings in making a REF return as well as the opportunity to make publication information (or even the outputs themselves) widely available.

It is probable that in the short to medium term most institutions will carry out the cost benefit analysis and will come to the conclusion that the cost of either a publications database or institutional repository is operationally justified. However the questions of ethos and academic freedom will remain an issue.