Most in-house REF training is delivered by excellent scholars. That is not the problem. The problem is that they are often too close to the system and to the institutional politics surrounding it to teach REF well. They don’t spend their days thinking about writing training or how to teach it, because that is not their job, or their expertise.
What I see repeatedly in universities is a familiar pattern. REF sessions led by senior colleagues with impressive CVs but no explicit model of quality they can articulate. Advice that collapses into folklore (“REF panels like these journals”, “this just feels 4*”). Workshops that either reassure or demoralise, but rarely sharpen.
The result is predictable.
Staff leave sessions motivated but unequipped or worse, quietly despondent. Internal reviewers disagree wildly, depending on whose work and whose sub discipline is ‘rated’ within the professorial hierarchy. “Quality” remains subjective, political, and opaque. REF readiness becomes something people feel rather than something they can diagnose.
This is not a failure of goodwill or expertise. It is a structural problem.
REF requires diagnostic precision. It requires the ability to separate scholarly excellence from REF signalling. And that is exceptionally hard to do from inside the room particularly when hierarchies, relationships, and institutional histories are in play.
External REF training works not because it is magically better, but because it does three things internal provision often cannot:
it disrupts assumptions about where scholars and subfields “should” sit
it separates intellectual quality from REF legibility
it operationalises assessment criteria instead of mystifying them
it’s led by people who train academics to write, and are dedicated to this only
REF readiness is not about confidence or seniority. It is about clarity.
And clarity is difficult to generate when everyone involved is embedded in the same institutional narratives and pressures.
For budget holders and research leaders, this is might not be welcome knowledge.
Without targeted, external REF expertise, institutions risk mistaking reassurance for readiness.
Whether you’re responsible for REF training at an institutional level, or navigating REF expectations as an individual academic, this is the work I do.
You can contact me via my email or message me here.