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[qrypt]

How much does it matter (e.g. for the REF) that one's department is organized into "research groups"?  My department is pretty small -- not really big enough to have enough people with overlapping interests sufficient to constitute plausible "research groups".  In other words, we are perceived not to have much of a coherent identity.  Is this a disadvantage for the REF?  How much does the REF (RAE) depend on the narrative describing our wondrous contribution to the discipline (and the peace and prosperity of the entire world) such that it really matters that we convey a sense of coherence? 

We keep trying to organize ourselves into research groups for this purpose, and it never really gets off the ground.  In the absence of REF concerns, I'd prefer to say screw it, we're just a department with some good people.  But I'm not sure whether we can get away with that.

[totoro]

I've started seeing this term "research group" only recently (I'm a geographer/economist). Seemed it was referring to a faculty member + postdocs + grad students in the natural sciences. But maybe there is another interpretation that you are suggesting?

[babbinacara]

We organised ourselves (or were organised into, by a few alpha dogs) research groups for the last RAE. We're a big enough department, esp. with affiliates and post-docs, that the groups looked and sounded plausible. Inevitably, there were some large and some small groups, and most of us were members of more than one group. But we did well in the RAE, in part because of the groups and because of a document which very plausibly described them, the people, the projects and all the "synergies" within and between groups.

There were two problems, though; the first is that the groups were really simply descriptive of very independent research that we did and have kept on doing without any reference to each other at all. (We did not confess this to the RAE people, and I will deny saying it.) The second was that creation of the groups has seemed to emphasise and expand existing differences among our department members in approaches to our field, which has aspects of humanities, social science and science. We still all get along, but our previous differences now have a name and a presence, if that makes sense.

Then there was an unexpected aspect: creation of the research groups has affected our teaching, as the origin of some new modules. I don't think the RAE was supposed to do that, but okay.

We're still embracing research groups for the REF, tinkering with them a bit. My guess is that they will be important (whenever the REF comes...), and that great scholars slung together in a department with no justification will be scrutinised harshly. Even without the REF, it's getting harder to replace retirees, etc., and having a document which describes yourselves as an interlocking system, rather than random individuals, might help in negotiations with admins. In a small department, it will be hard to come up with research groups which are not fictional; but rather than theme, do you have plausible theory or approach groups you could magic up?

[wegie]

The second was that creation of the groups has seemed to emphasise and expand existing differences among our department members in approaches to our field, which has aspects of humanities, social science and science. We still all get along, but our previous differences now have a name and a presence, if that makes sense.

Oh, that makes perfect sense! My PhD department had two major research groups, who always self-defined as being the opposite of the other lot, regardless of any commonalities they posessed. The fact they could put a label (I have a methodological dispute with the approach taken by group X) to not liking the guy in the other group made it much easier to prolong rifts.

[expatinuk]

Yeah, the RAE really liked Research Groups because it showed that you had a plan. I'm sure that the REF is going to look at them in the same way.

[science_expat]

Yeah, the RAE really liked Research Groups because it showed that you had a plan. I'm sure that the REF is going to look at them in the same way.

I'm not so sure for two reasons. The first is that it's not clear that the REF will have the equivalent of the RA5a which was the awful document in which we had to describe organization, plans, support, etc... Indications from HEFCE is that they will be providing templates in order to "reduce burden" and hence the nature of the templates would strongly influence the answer to Qrypt's question.

Second, the proposed subpanels in the REF are very large and include quite disparate groups - one contains both subjects allied to medicine and nursing, for example. With such a structure, it's hard to see how synergies can be demonstrated and hence I think that smaller scale coherence may also become unimportant.