Knowledge Exchange Framework, edition six
Research England has published the results of KEF6, the sixth iteration of the Knowledge Exchange Framework, aiming to show how universities in England are working with businesses, the public sector, contributing to local growth, and otherwise performing in knowledge exchange.
KEF segments higher education providers into peer group clusters depending on size, research intensity and other characteristics, and draws on data to assess performance across various knowledge exchange “perspectives”. The latest exercise shows that cluster averages for all aspects of knowledge exchange “either improved or maintained from last year in almost all cases.”
Research England’s press release highlights various areas of improvement: very large research intensives have, overall, improved their performance in the “working with business” KEF aspect, while several clusters saw improvements in research partnerships. York St John University’s improvement in proportion of outputs co-authored with non-academic partners is singled out for praise, as is the University of Cumbria’s progress in working with the public and third sector.
A circular letter from Research England to heads of institution describes the KEF6 results as “commendable”, especially given recent freezes to commercialisation funding:
“This is a commendable outcome, particularly considering that the amount of Research England’s Higher Education Innovation Funding (HEIF) distributed to the sector has remained relatively unchanged in recent years.”
The KEF dashboards themselves allow for an individual institution’s performance for each aspect to be viewed, along with that of each cluster overall.
The majority of the data is taken from HESA’s HE Business and Community Interaction release, with the addition of Innovate UK income (within the working with businesses aspect) and data from Elsevier on co-authorship with non-academic partners, used in the research partnerships aspect.
KEF6 continues to display the institutional narrative statements which were submitted for KEF3 – it’s acknowledged that these “relate to activity undertaken in the period 2019–20, 2020–21 and 2021–22” and as such an institution’s displayed performance in public and community engagement, and local growth and regeneration, “may not reflect current circumstances.”
As the technical annex puts it:
“While we had previously anticipated that narrative statements will be updated every three years, we can confirm that narrative statements were not requested for KEF6. This decision aims to balance the need for providing institutions opportunities to showcase strategic change with the importance of managing the overall burden on the sector.”
Narrative content is said to now be aligned with the REF cycle to minimise burden and “enable close policy alignment” between the two exercises. This means that new KEF requirements will be published in 2028, with new narrative collection and publication earmarked for 2029.