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Abstract
This article focuses on ‘impact’ as a new condition of research assessment for UK academics. It explores a history of resistance to an ‘impact agenda’ and how impact as a component of the Research Excellence Framework (REF) – a system of performance based funding – is viewed by academics as an infringement to a scholarly way of life; as symptomatic of the marketisation of higher education; and as fundamentally incompatible and deleterious to the production of new knowledge.
Notes
1. The REF is also a funding mechanism, though unlike RCUK which funds individual projects on a prospective basis, channels ‘Quality Research’ monies, retrospectively and on an institutional basis according to the outcomes of assessment.
2. Unlike previous RAEs, in the REF only research rated at 3* and 4* will attract funding.