The REF’s singular focus on excellence limits academic diversity

Research assessment exercises, such as the REF ostensibly serve to evaluate research, but they also shape and manage it. Based on a study of REF submissions in the fields of economics, history, business and politics, Engelbert Stockhammer, argues that the REF promotes a narrow vision of economics determined largely by work published in particular journals and calls for a wider distribution of research funding to prevent fields being captured by dominant academic cultures.