The Academy of Social Sciences and many of its member learned societies have joined forces to advocate for a change to the Strategy, People and Research Environment (SPRE) component of REF 2029.
SPRE replaces what was proposed as the People, Culture and Environment (PCE) component and asks institutions and Units of Assessment (UoA) to show how their strategies contribute towards the development of people and good research environments. For REF 2029, the SPRE element will make up 20% of the overall unit quality profile and consists of an institution-level statement (ILS, weighting 60% of the SPRE score) and a unit-level statement (ULS, weighting 40% of the SPRE score).
The Academy, working in tandem with its member learned societies, has written to the Chair of SPRE and of Main Panel C of REF 2029, Professor Jane Falkingham FAcSS, outlining concerns at the ratio of the weightings of the two statements and proposing it should be changed to 40% institutional-level and 60% unit-level to make the process fairer for all and to give a more appropriate weight to the ULS in Sub-Panel assessments.
As outlined in the letter, the current suggested weighting (60% ILS, 40% ULS) creates a risk that units across the social sciences, including for example law schools and business and management schools, are overly assessed against criteria that they have limited control over (the ILS) and do not accurately reflect the organisation and support requirements of their unit-level strategy, people, and research environments (ULS).
In addition to this, most of the social sciences (and the humanities) do not require the types of research environment infrastructure and investment that the STEM and bio-medical sectors do. While the institution level approach to SPRE is important in setting a context, the key driver of strategy, people and research for Panel C will be at the school/faculty of social sciences level or the unit level.
It follows, therefore, that there is also risk that the current proposed weightings may systematically penalise high-performing UoAs in less wealthy institutions and may serve to unfairly inflate the scores of weaker UoAs in better funded-institutions. This could lead to perpetuating existing inequalities between institutions.
As such, the proposed change (to 40% ILS, 60% ULS) would offer a fairer weighting for smaller units/institutions where some social science disciplines undertake outstanding research and impact programmes, that generally do not require a broad institutional infrastructure; and those which exist within institutions that are less able to evidence a strong and broad ILS such as would be required for a more science-oriented and larger institution.
As stated in the letter, the Academy and its member social science communities believe that this adjustment would make the process fairer and signal the seriousness with which unit level SPRE frameworks and support should be taken within the context of the broader institution levels of support for all.
The signatories to the letter were 23 member learned societies in the social sciences.