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In December 2025 the REF team published updates and resumed the criteria setting phase following the recent pause.  The majority of updates relate to People, Culture and Environment (PCE) with research culture maintained as a key focus and a greater focus on alignment between activity and strategic intent.

  1. PCE has been relabelled as Strategy, People and Research Environment (SPRE) and the weighting for the new element is 20%.
  2. Contribution to Knowledge and Understanding (CKU) is weighted at 55%.
  3. Engagement and Impact (E&I) is weighted at 25%.

Strategy, people and research environment (SPRE)

The changes to SPRE have partially emerged from the PCE pilots.

There is a significant attempt to reduce the burden of the exercise through reverting to the environment statement template from REF 2021 for both institution and unit-level statements.

SPRE asks institutions and UoAs to demonstrate their clear strategic intent and how their strategies contribute toward the development of people and good research environments. This will be done primarily through narrative with metrics to support.

The major changes are:

  • the underpinning focus on strategy and institutional research infrastructure (ie: systems and policies that support research)
  • a greater focus on research culture and evidence of improving culture metrics
  • new partnerships, collaborations, policies,

SPRE will be assessed at both institutional and UoA level

The SPRE element will consist of an institution-level statement (ILS, weighting 60% of the SPRE score) and a unit-level statement (ULS, 40%).

The argument in favour of the 60:40 split is that it incentivises Unis to improve their research environments across the whole institution. This means that the research infrastructure of the institution will have a greater impact than the research infrastructure of the UoA where research is actually produced.

The two statements will be assessed separately and both statements will comprise the four sections equivalent to the UL environment statement from REF 2021.  In addition to the ILS and ULS there will be data requirements at both levels:

SPRE (20% of overall UoA Quality Profile)

Sections in Statement
Institutional Level Statement (ILS) 60% UoA Level Statement (ULS) 40%
  • context, mission and strategy;
  • people
  • income, infrastructure and facilities
  • collaboration, engagement & impact
  • context, mission and strategy;
  • people
  • income, infrastructure and facilities
  • collaboration, engagement & impact

The ULS also has 3 required elements:

  • the statement of representation
  • the statement on the research community
  • details of the approach to Engagement and Impact.
Data Requirements
Institutional Level Statement (ILS) 60% UoA Level Statement (ULS) 40%
  • which units are submitted
  • volume
  • research doctoral degrees awarded
  • annual research income across all sources and by source
  • volume
  • research doctoral degrees awarded
  • annual research income across all sources and by source
  • EDI data (that are already collected via the HESA staff record)
  • quantitative or qualitative information on the career progression and paths of current and former research staff
  • outcomes of staff surveys
  • data around open research practices
  • qualitative information on approaches to improve research robustness and reproducibility

Contribution to Knowledge and Understanding (CKU)

  • disciplinary statements have been removed entirely from CKU
  • CKU now accounts for 55% of the weighting s
  • there is now an upper limit on individual submissions of 5 per unit unless there is an explanation why it exceeds this
  • there is no requirement that every researcher submits
  • there will be a requirement to produce an institutional and UoA statement on how the submissions are representative
  • the portability rules have remained broadly the same with one concession that allows long-form submissions to be portable for a 5-year period
  • in REF 2029 the output will be captured by the institution where there is a “substantive link.

Engagement and Impact (E&I)

  • REF 2029 will maintain the REF 2021 submission template structure for ICS
  • as in REF 2021, REF 2029 will continue to assess and value, through the strategy, people, and research environment (SPRE) statements, strategies, support, structures and cultures that encourage and enable impact generation.
  • the 2* quality threshold for underpinning research remains removed The research underpinning ICS only needs to meet the REF definition of research.
  • the ICS template in the submission system now provides space to recognise and celebrate the full range of roles and careers that contribute to the ICS