The Research Excellence Framework (REF) is a system for assessing the quality of research in UK HEIs. It replaced the Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) and is undertaken by the four UK higher education funding bodies, to:

– inform the selective allocation of research funding to HEIs

– provide benchmarking information and establish reputational yardsticks

– provide accountability for public investment in research and demonstrate its benefits

The library’s role in the REF submission was to provide overall leadership for the submission of REF2 data and physical outputs; this involved metadata verification of over 7000 records, checking Scopus citation information and the submission of physical research outputs which amounted to almost 700 items including books, portfolios, journals and compositions.

The electronic submission deadline was 29 November 2013 so for most people involved in REF2014 their part was done, however here in the library there were almost 700 physical items still to be submitted and each one of these had to be checked, labelled and boxed up before being sent to HEFCE.

On 12 December the physical outputs left the library on their way to HEFCE, the past few months have been extremely busy here within Scholarly Communications and we are grateful for all the help we’ve received from our acquisitions and cataloguing colleagues in helping us meet this deadline, finally we can breathe a sigh of relief!