People culture and environment will have a greater weighting in the next iteration of the REF. Lesley Uttley argues research assessment plays a significant role in positively shaping research culture and outlines four ways it can do so.

The next REF will place a greater value on people, culture and environment, or in other words research culture. A pilot project is also currently investigating which indicators might best be used to assess this aspect of research culture.

However, across many fields research culture has already received significant attention in recent years. To tap into these insights, we recently undertook a scoping review on the state of research culture reform in health and biomedical sciences. Drawing on this work we suggest how four dimensions of existing reform efforts that could shape national assessments like the REF: inclusivity, transparency, rigour, and objectivity.

Research culture refers to the values, norms, and behaviours embedded in academic research environments. It impacts not only the quality of scientific outputs, but also the inclusivity and sustainability of the academic ecosystem. In our review we found that incentives and the researcher evaluation frameworks heavily influence research culture and creates ripple effects on workforce composition, methodological integrity, and public trust in science.

Inclusivity

Inclusivity is a missing cornerstone in research culture with significant inequities within research teams, for characteristics such as gender and race. There’s a persistent “glass ceiling” which prevents women and minority groups from reaching senior roles in academia. Women are less likely to be published, cited, or offered authorship, particularly in male-dominated fields. For women of colour, the challenges deepen due to the intersectionality of race and gender biases.

Geographic imbalances in academic literature also highlight global inequities in the research environment. Research output is disproportionately dominated by high-income countries (HICs), with low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) facing barriers to funding, authorship, and representation. Inclusivity is not just an ethical imperative, it actually helps to ensure research outcomes reflect the diversity of the populations they aim to serve. For REF 2029, this means valuing diverse representation across career stages and disciplines.

Transparency

We also highlight transparency as a core foundation in healthy research environments. Despite the growing movement toward open science, barriers persist which stem from incentives tied to the high valuation of traditional academic journal publications. The time-honoured profit-making publication model in academia slows the adoption of truly open-access dissemination practices.

Researchers from less affluent institutions face financial hurdles, such as costly article processing charges, exacerbating disparities in access to research. Sharing data often clashes with career pressures. Without structural incentives, early-career researchers risk prioritising traditional research papers over transparent practices like data sharing. Unregistered studies, incomplete reporting, and selective data usage undermine research integrity. Greater emphasis on transparency and rewarding open access efforts beyond journal papers during REF assessments could catalyse more responsible research practices.

Rigour

Rigour is also key to avoiding erosion of quality. There are emerging threats in the research landscape such as generative AI, paper mills and predatory publications which can lead to fabricated research infiltrating the evidence base. We categorise common questionable research practices (QRPs) such as p-hacking and hypothesizing after results are known (HARKing), that can occur at each stage of the research lifecycle and these “researcher degrees of freedom” can be used to fish for publishable findings.

Challenges in obtaining engaged peer review and blind spots in editorial processes may allow technically unsound articles to be published. Funding for replication studies remains sparse, discouraging the validation of existing findings and fuelling a reproducibility crisis. REF 2029 must incentivize robust methodologies and prioritise the integrity of research processes. By rewarding the highest standards of methodological rigour, REF can foster a healthier academic culture.

Objectivity

Objectivity is the final critical theme in rethinking researcher assessment and in turn research culture. Metric-driven assessments which prioritise quantity of publications and journal impact factors, inadvertently values positivist research and underpins publication bias. Conflicts of interest and other motives or researcher allegiances influence the reliability and validity of research outputs.

REF assessments should consider conflicts of interest and prioritise research independence. Researcher’s reflection on their own positionality in the research output could foster greater accountability from researchers on the evidence they produce. Established researchers benefit disproportionately from the status quo of traditional research assessment and may be unmotivated to advocate for reform, while ECRs face precarious employment and limited opportunities. Collaborative, team-oriented assessments and rewarding generous leadership could level the playing field. REF 2029 offers an opportunity to shift focus from narrow outputs to holistic contributions. By valuing collaboration, mentorship, and diverse career trajectories, researcher assessment can reshape academia’s incentive structures.

From a comprehensive series of recommendations based on the scoping review, a few core principles are suggested here that could potentially reform research culture and lead to a healthier evidence ecosystem.

1. Inclusivity in evaluation:

• Metrics that reward diversity in teams and ensure that inclusivity for equity characteristics extends to senior management teams. Equitable collaborations with LMICs should allow for meaningful contributions.
  -Authorship practices should address power imbalances to ensure that senior, established researchers do not monopolise prominent authorial positions on research outputs.

2. Transparency as a benchmark:

• Funders should require data-sharing plans and adherence to open-science practices.
• Institutions should reward researchers who prospectively specify research protocols and publish negative or replication findings.

3. Rigour as a priority:

• Emphasize methodological quality and reproducibility over publication quantity.
• Create funding streams specifically for replication studies.

4. Objective metrics:

• Move beyond rewarding quantity of journal publications or nominal authorship on papers with high impact factors to avoid practices which game the system in researcher evaluation.
• Account for career breaks, valuing a range of contributions and career pathways in the research lifecycle.
• Focus on the people and their contribution to high quality research, rewarding mentorship roles and generous leadership to a positive research culture.

The review underscores that researcher assessment is pivotal in shaping academic culture. REF 2029 has a unique opportunity to lead by example, prioritising the health of the research ecosystem over outdated performance metrics. By valuing people and processes as much as outputs, the UK can cultivate a thriving, inclusive, and globally impactful research culture.

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