IN DEPTH
Why REF matters to us all
Rita Marcella gives ten compelling reasons why research evaluation is important for the library and information community as a whole, arguing that the value of LIS knowledge must be highlighted to wider society.
THE Research Excellence Frame- work (REF) is the UK government’s periodic system for assessing the excellence of research in higher education institutions.
Research evaluation has been happen- ing for many years and has gone through numerous changes in that time. It sits alongside the assessment of teaching quality (through TEF – the Teaching Excellence Framework), where universities are asked to demonstrate that they are delivering strong programmes, attuned to the needs of employers and meeting the needs of students. Both are important, for without excellent teaching we arguably serve no purpose in preparing students to deliver an important role in society, and without excellent research we are not stretching the minds of our students and preparing them to contribute to the creation of new knowl- edge. Both TEF and REF assess the contri- bution that our discipline can make to the world as we know it: they are also oppor- tunities for us to communicate the genuine and very signifi cant contribution that libraries and information science can make in achieving “an eff ect on, change or benefi t to the economy, society, culture, public policy or services, health, the environment or quality of life, beyond academia”.1 You may be asking yourself, why should I be interested in this fairly abstract and bureaucratic process? Below I set out ten reasons why research matters to all of us in library and information science: there are many more reasons but Dewey-like I arbi- trarily chose a good number to begin.
32 INFORMATION PROFESSIONAL
Rita Marcella (
r.c.marcella@
rgu.ac.uk) is Head of Research and Marketing, Lorensbergs.
Why research matters to us all 1. As librarians and information scientists our discipline is committed to facilitating access by all to high quality information and excellent research sits at the core of high quality information.
2. The CILIP goal is ‘to put information and library skills and professional values at the heart of a democratic, equal and prosperous society’ and excellent research will build knowledge of how the skills we possess con- tribute to achieving a democratic society. My own research has for 25 years focussed on how people interact with information in order to make decisions and make sense of their world. It is a challenge that con- tinues as our most recent research into people’s conception of the veracity of facts presented as part of a political campaign shows. Even in a world where people live
December-January 2017/18
Why REF Matters
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