ARMA REF SIG Drop In Session by ARMA UK

Substantive Link

2025-11-26 12:17:15 UTC

We are working our way through checking substantive links. How are people interpreting the eligible employment link section 6.3.1 CKU 'a minimum of 0.2 FTE for at least 12 months continuous employment'? If someone's contract started on 1/8/2023 and a paper was published 1/1/2024 does that mean the output cannot be included because they hadn't been with us for 'at least' 12 months?

HESA Staff Data

2025-12-10 13:42:13 UTC

Has anyone heard anything back from the HESA / REF pilot year?

CKU: Substantive Link

2025-12-10 20:48:10 UTC

RE: 7.2.3 - expectation of no more than 5 outputs are associated with a single substantive link within a submission at UoA level.

Given the substantive link is a single HESA ID, I’m interpreting this to mean that we could include more than five outputs for a single author as long as no more than five outputs use that author’s HESA ID as the substantive link, and the rest use the HESA IDs of co-authors within our institution. Are others interpreting this the same way?

2025-12-11 09:36:10 UTC

Can anyone help clarify Portability as this seems to be more confusing than ever with the statement around long form outputs being 5yrs but for the majority of outputs 2 yrs - how does this actually work in term of including outputs from leavers or staff recruited late. Think it is also hard to separate and communicate to others eligibility for volume compared to substantive link and eligibility of outputs. Maybe it's just me?

'Recommended' Maximum of 5

2025-12-11 20:58:14 UTC

I don't understand the purpose of this being recommended, rather than compulsory, at all. Surely it opens the door to huge game playing. Why would anyone abide by it, when the 'punishment' in SPRE would always be worth accepting?

Multiple Weighting

2025-12-12 16:17:09 UTC

Have I noticed correctly that 'multiple weighting' has gone and it's just back to double weighting now?

'Maximum of 5'

2025-12-15 10:37:13 UTC

Does this apply to 5 per unit of assessment or 5 per author. So for example, if you have an interdisciplinary researcher that has multiple outputs that could fit under a couple of UoAs, could you submit 5 under 1 UoA and a different 5 under another.

Engaging with the REF Community - what do we want? List below...

2025-12-15 11:43:15 UTC

Code of Practice submission deadline

2025-12-15 13:03:19 UTC

Really fretting about this. I think we will find getting our CoP through internal governance in time for the May deadline, really tricky. Would certainly appreciate another summer deadline

CoP and VM

2025-12-15 13:32:25 UTC

How does one make a volume measure submission in the absence of an approved CoP - assuming a May submission and 3 months to approve - a CoP is likely to only be approved in August, leaving 4 - 6 weeks for all the HESA VM submission processes.

Open Access policy

2025-12-15 13:42:37 UTC

Our library has huge concerns about the OA policy that is due to begin on 1 Jan. Where there is no embargo the current policy reads that the manuscript has to be made available on the same day (evenings, weekends etc) whereas in the old policy we had 30 days. Is this other's understanding too?

Things...

2025-12-15 13:50:09 UTC

Joint submissions

2025-12-15 14:01:08 UTC

So how do Institutional and unit level statements work if you have a joint UoA submission?