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Contribution to Knowledge and Understanding (CKU)
The outputs element familiar from REF 2014 and REF 2021 has been renamed ‘Contribution to knowledge and understanding’ and its weighting has been adjusted to 50% of the overall quality profile (subject to change on the outcome of the PCE pilot). It will be based on the assessment of a pool of submitted research outputs and elements of the disciplinary-level evidence statement.
The current guidance on this element of assessment has been summarised in the sections below. The full guidance relating to the CKU assessment element can be found on the REF 2029 website.
Summary of the CKU guidance
To be eligible for submission to REF 2029 outputs must meet the REF definition of research, briefly defined as a process of investigation leading to new insights, effectively shared.
Outputs must be first made publicly available between 1 January 2021 and 31 December 2028 (i.e. early online date on the publisher’s website)
Research must have been undertaken at, or enabled by, the submitting HEI. This is also referred to as a demonstrable and substantive link to the submitting HEI. The substantive link is evidenced through an author’s eligible employment contract with the HEI.
For outputs within scope of the Open Access policy, they must meet the requirements of that policy (see further information below).
Due to the decoupling of staff from outputs in REF2029, there are no minimum or maximum submission limits for outputs from any author.
Output submissions to each unit of assessment are required to be representative of the range and diversity of research activity in that unit.
For each unit of assessment submitted to REF the number of outputs required is calculated at 2.5 outputs per FTE (full time equivalent) of volume contributing staff, rounded to the nearest whole number.
The FTE of volume contributing staff is calculated based on averaged values derived from the HESA staff returns in 2025/26 and 2026/27.
Outputs are not restricted to the UoA of the author(s) contract of employment.
Outputs can be submitted to any UoA where the research aligns to the UoA’s descriptors. This means that an output can be submitted more than once if it aligns to more than one UoA, based on the UoA descriptors.
Outputs submitted to multiple UoAs are more likely to be audited by REF.
The representativeness of an institution’s output submission will be assessed at the disciplinary level, via REF 2029 disciplinary level evidence statements.
The full guidance for disciplinary level evidence statements will be published at a later date.
Open Access Policy
Summary of the requirements
For REF 2029 there will continue to be an open access requirement for journal articles and conference proceedings:
- The REF 2021 policy will continue to apply to journal articles and conference contributions with an ISSN published between 1 January 2021 and 31 December 2025.
- The new REF 2029 policy will apply to journal articles and conference contributions with an ISSN published between 1 January 2026 and 31 December 2028.
Changes to the submission requirements
From 01 January 2026 embargo periods have been reduced:
- For outputs submitted to main panels A and B: 6 months (reduced from 12 months)
- For outputs submitted to main panels C and D: 12 months (reduced from 24 months)
Outputs should be licensed as openly as possible; the funding bodies strong preference is for licensing as CC-BY (or equivalent). However, licensing outputs at CC-BY-NC, CC-BY-ND or CC-BY-NC-ND (or equivalent) are also permitted.
Out of scope outputs
There is no open access requirement in REF 2029 for any other output types (eg. longform outputs, including monographs, book chapters and scholarly editions).
Pre-print articles or any other output types without an ISSN, are not subject to the open access requirements for submission.
The funding bodies continue to encourage institutions to make other types of outputs available as open access, where appropriate.
If you require any assistance with ensuring that your output is REF 2029 compliant, please contact pure-support@ulster.ac.uk
