This is to inform, there is a REF Reporting Profile available in CERIF-XML which is being prepared for its addition to the REF submission system during the first half of 2013. The REF submission system will be opened for institution’s to start preparing their submissions to the REF 2014 from late January 2013.
A multitude of ongoing related activities in the UK are in need of clarity over concepts and definitions (see also results from the CiA workshop) that allow for a meaningful and formal description of its certain concerned aspects within the Research ecosystem. These are often concerned with Research information and data exchange and to achieve interoperability. This contribution introduces the concepts applied with reporting to the REF – hence the REF Reporting Profile and explains how these REF reporting concepts have been formally described in CERIF-XML. The idea is to introduce the different employed modules stepwise and in the end aggregate them within one new post.
The REF requires reporting of information on behalf of institutions. One institution may have multiple submissions to different REF panels or so-called Units of Assessment. The REF reporting concepts are:
- institution
- group
- staff
- circumstances
- outputs
- environments
- income
- impact
- case studies
- submission contacts
The Research Excellence Framework (REF) is the new system for assessing the quality of research in UK higher education institutions (HEIs). It will replace the Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) and will be completed in 2014. UK Universities are currently very busy preparing their data for the January submission in different formats (e.g. xml, xsd, accdb, mdb).
On behalf of Jisc, this contribution resulted from a collaboration between Gareth Edwards (HEFCE) and Brigitte Jörg (UKOLN, euroCRIS). The former is very familiar with the REF submission system, conceps and requirements, and has been involved in multiple previous RAE submissions. The latter has been leading the CERIF task group at euroCRIS for many years, and recently joined UKOLN in the role of the CERIF National Coordinator with the Jisc Innovation Support Center, and was involved in various related UK projects such as R4R and MICE.