Responding to the release of the consultation for the new Research Excellence Framework (REF) Alice Hynes, Chief Executive of the higher education representative body GuildHE, said:

“It is very pleasing to see within this consultation document a continued commitment to the principle of promoting and rewarding excellence in research wherever it is found. The GuildHE institutions that are building on their significant successes in the 2008 Research Assessment Exercise will be keen to engage with this new framework to measure high quality research.

“GuildHE looks forward to working with the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) on exploring the idea of measuring the impact of research.

“We are pleased and somewhat relieved to learn that the piloting of a system with a greater reliance on citations to measure research quality has led to the conclusion that this is not the best way forward. We thank those institutions that put themselves through the piloting process.

“HEFCE is to be congratulated on the quality and detail of the analysis in this document, and we look forward to responding to it in greater detail.”

For more information, please contact:

Alice Hynes

GuildHE Chief Executive

Tel: 0207 387 7711

Email: alice.hynes@guildhe.ac.uk