There is widespread agreement that the Research Excellence Framework (REF) is far more than a mere bureaucratic exercise in funding allocation. The seven-yearly assessment of universities¡¯ research quality distributes a great deal of prestige and nearly ?2 billion in annual funding, influencing everything from hiring decisions to research priorities.

There is much less agreement, however, in whether the REF¡¯s fundamental role in shaping the UK¡¯s higher education landscape is a positive or a negative. A majority of established academics at the most prestigious universities tend to take the latter view, seeing the REF as an overly bureaucratic exercise that serves merely to reinforce a natural hierarchy of which everyone is already aware.

But we disagree. REF 2029, in particular, signals a pivotal shift in how academic excellence is conceptualised, affording an opportunity to radically rethink the role British universities should play in society. That is why we proudly describe ourselves as REF enthusiasts.

First, REF 2029 boldly reduces the weighting of traditional academic outputs from 60 to 50 per cent of total marks. This isn¡¯t just a minor adjustment: it¡¯s a direct challenge to the fetishisation of four-star publications (and the large project grants that facilitate them) that has dominated academic careers for too long. The message is clear: publishing high-quality outputs, while still important, is no longer enough.

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Second, REF 2029 places research culture at the heart of every submission. By mandating self-reflective statements on how it feeds into impact and research quality, it forces universities to confront the fundamental questions they¡¯ve been avoiding.

These include ¨C in an impact context ¨C why we conduct research and who benefits from it. But they also include even more uncomfortable questions: How exactly do we conduct research? How do early-career researchers, technicians, participants and other typically invisible actors contribute to the final REF results? And can we honestly say we¡¯re not exploiting anyone along the way?

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Third, REF 2029 revolutionises impact assessment. It breaks free from the artificial constraints of isolated success stories by demanding a comprehensive statement on impact-related activities (weighted at 20 per cent of total scores), which will serve to embed impact into the DNA of academic work.

Take my institution, the University of Sheffield. Our School of Architecture and Landscape alone has identified 14 potential impact case studies that could be submitted to the REF (Unit of Assessment 13: Architecture, Built Environment and Planning). Most would have remained invisible under the rules of REF 2021, but the reformed impact statement ensures that every meaningful contribution now counts ¨C and acknowledges that real impact emerges from sustained engagement, not isolated academic achievements.

The removal of the requirement that the research outputs underlying impact case studies must score at least 2* (¡°internationally recognised¡±) for quality is also nothing short of revolutionary. It shatters the artificial barrier between ¡°prestigious¡± research and real-world impact. This breaking of journal rankings¡¯ monopoly on the concept of academic merit will force academia to finally deliver on the full breadth of its social contract ¨C to conduct not?only ground-breaking research but also, just as importantly, research that changes lives.

Moreover, by prioritising public benefits over traditional academic metrics, REF 2029 has the potential to hand power back to the academics ¨C especially early-career academics ¨C who have been marginalised by the current system, in which universities serve managers rather than society and in which credit accrues to group leaders, rather than junior and support staff. We can finally start to push back on decades of creeping managerialism.

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Yet this won¡¯t happen through passive compliance. Unless we take positive action to ensure that the transformative potential of REF 2029 is fulfilled, there is a huge risk that research culture and impact will simply become just as tightly managed as research outputs have been.

A pilot on measuring research culture ¨C a notoriously difficult question ¨C is currently running. Academic and professional staff ¨C especially departmental REF coordinators ¨C must engage with its findings and advocate for a radical, forward-looking approach. And we can. At Sheffield, for instance, the discussions we¡¯ve had on research culture, with a view to feeding into the REF consultation on it, were quite broad and innovative ¨C beyond, I believe, the expectations of the university¡¯s management.

After all, a lot of decisions are made relatively low in universities¡¯ hierarchical structures. The way outputs and impact case studies are assessed is often (though not always) determined at the level of department/unit of assessment. And data collection for research culture is typically organised by colleagues from research support or junior academics.

Of course, I am aware of problems with REF 2029. In particular, severing the relationship between individual academics and their department¡¯s REF submission (by abolishing the requirement for every eligible scholar to submit at least one output) means that colleagues who lose their jobs will be unable to use their ¡°REFability¡± in their subsequent job-hunting, while the university that sacked them will be able to take all the credit.

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But this uncoupling also gives us the chance to go beyond our individual ambitions and push to make universities better places, both for their internal and external constituencies. We finally have a mechanism to overthrow the neo-feudal system of academic gatekeeping that has defined UK universities for too long.

Those who dismiss the REF as bureaucratic interference are defending a status quo that no longer deserves to exist. By validating collaborative environments and community engagement, we¡¯re not just measuring different things. We¡¯re declaring that a different kind of academia is possible.

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is a senior lecturer in humanities and architecture at the University of Sheffield and is an associate professor in the Bartlett School of Architecture at UCL.