In defence of the Research Excellence Framework

An as-yet-unannounced review of Business, Innovation and Skills-funded bodies raises a potential threat to the future of research funding. We need an intelligent, evidence-informed debate about the costs and benefits of assessment

In academic circles, it's become fashionable to denounce the Research Excellence Framework (REF) as the sector's very own spawn of satan. The REF, a six-yearly assessment of the qualities and impacts of UK research, is used to allocate around 1.6 billion of public funding on an annual basis. In these austere times, you might think that would be enough to win it a few friends. Instead, the critics are lining up.

The REF is "a bloated boondoggle", a "Frankenstein monster" and "a Minotaur that must be appeased by bloody sacrifices". It is responsible for a "blackmail culture", a "fever" and a "toxic miasma" which hangs over our campuses, choking the dying gasps of creativity from academic life. Entire books have been devoted to its insidious "hypocrisies". Sir Paul Nurse and Lord Stern, the presidents of our most eminent academies, query its "wasteful and distorting" influence. Even Jo Johnson, the science minister, is now trying to sell the virtues of teaching assessment on the basis that he has "no intention of replicating the individual and institutional burdens of the REF".