The Future Research Assessment Programme, which is led by the UK’s research funding bodies, is surveying researchers about their experiences of REF2021.

FRAP aims to explore possible approaches to the assessment of UK higher education research performance. As part of this work, the funding bodies seek to understand the impact of the current assessment exercise, the Research Excellence Framework (REF) 2021 on the research community. The REF is not an assessment of individuals; however, the funding bodies wish to understand how unit-level assessment impacts individual researchers.

REF 2021 feedback survey

A commissioned report, ‘Understanding perceptions of the Research Excellence Framework among UK researchers’ has gathered evidence of attitudes to the REF in real time as institutions were preparing their submissions to the exercise.

The survey aims to understand whether the views identified in the report are representative of the wider UK research community.