What the REF?!
A new podcast to demystify the REF
What the REF?! is a new podcast that will investigate issues around research culture, recognition for success in research and all things and everything to do with the REF. The REF is an amazing driver of research culture change. The goal of this podcast is to get more people to engage with it. Every fortnight we will discuss new subjects and talk with experts on the REF, research culture, hidden roles and non-traditional outputs.
Our hosts are all members of the Hidden REF committee based at the universities of Southampton and Bristol: James Baker, Gemma Derrick – a self-confessed REF junkie – and Simon Hettrick, and our producer is Ben Thomas.
If you have a question about the REF that you would like us to answer, or an idea for the podcast, let us know at WTreF@hidden-ref.org, BlueSky or Linkedin.
Listen to What the REF?! on YouTube or wherever you usually find your podcasts.
Episodes
Ep3. What the REF are our research incentives?
In this episode, we kick off with a few updates and then hear about the incredible agenda planned for the Festival of Hidden REF (7-8 October in Birmingham). We are hugely excited to welcome our first guest: Marcus Munafò, Deputy Vice-Chancellor and Provost at the University of Bath and Director of the UK Reproducibility Network. He talks about his experience of the REF and its role in incentivising research behaviour, how we can improve research quality by focussing on the entire research process and not just it’s final output, and the changes that will be needed if universities are to keep pace with the team-based nature of modern research.
The next episode of What the REF will be a big one! We’re going to take a look at the guidance for the Contribution to Knowledge and Understanding and some of the questions that it has generated.
Ep2. What the REF should we call these outputs?!
In this episode, we focus on the struggle of what to call the outputs that aren’t journal or book publications. We update on an article from Dame Jessica Corner on the People, Culture and Environment statement, what’s happening with REF panelists and – for possibly the first time in history – use the words “secretariat” and “interesting” in the same sentence.
Ep1. What the REF is this podcast all about?
The first ever episode of What the REF?! In this episode, we discuss the REF as an amazing driver of research culture change and our hopes for increasing engagement with the exercise so that we can build a research environment that is more equitable and more effective. We talk about our dream guests for future episodes, the difficulties in running an assessment that gets to the heart of what is important to research, REF myth busting, Gemma tests our knowledge of REF output categories, and we even look into how long it would take the average person to read through all of the REF guidance (spoiler: it’s about 11 days).