Every great discovery begins long before a headline or journal article.
Behind every experiment, dataset, and lecture lies a community of highly skilled technical professionals, technologists, facility managers, and infrastructure specialists. They design and maintain the systems that make research work, train others to use complex equipment, and ensure data integrity and reproducibility. Yet their contribution has too often been invisible in how we assess and reward research excellence.
The pause in the Research Excellence Framework (REF) is more than a scheduling adjustment, it’s a moment to reflect on what we value within the UK research and innovation sector.
If we are serious about supporting excellence, we must recognise all those who make it possible, not just those whose names appear on papers or grants, but the whole team, including technical professionals whose expertise enables every discovery.
Making people visible in research culture
Over the past decade, there has been growing recognition that research culture, including visibility, recognition, and support for technical professionals is central to delivering world-class outcomes. Initiatives such as the Technician Commitment, now backed by more than 140 universities and research institutes, have led the way in embedding good practice around technical professional careers, progression, and recognition.
Alongside this, the UK Institute for Technical Skills and Strategy (UK ITSS) continues to advocate for technical professionals nationally to ensure they are visible and their inputs are recognised within the UK’s research and innovation system. These developments have helped reshape how universities think about people, culture, and environment, creating the conditions where all contributors to research and innovation can thrive.
A national capability – not a hidden workforce
This shift is not just about fairness or inclusion, it’s about the UK’s ability to deliver on its strategic ambitions. Technical professionals are critical to achieving the goals set out in the UK Government’s Modern Industrial Strategy and to the success of frontier technologies such as artificial intelligence, quantum, engineering biology, advanced connectivity, and semiconductors. These frontier sectors rely on technical specialists to design, operate, and maintain the underpinning infrastructure on which research and innovation depend.
Without a stable, well-supported technical professional workforce, the UK risks losing the very capacity it needs to remain globally competitive. Attracting, training, and retaining this talent necessitates that technical roles are visible and recognised – not treated as peripheral to research, but as essential to it.
Why REF matters
This is where the People, Culture and Environment (PCE) element of the REF becomes critical. REF has always shaped behaviour across the sector. Its weighting signals what the UK values in research and innovation. Some have argued that PCE should be reduced (or indeed removed) to simplify the REF process, ease administrative burden, or avoid what they see as subjectivity in the assessment of research culture. Others have suggested a greater emphasis on environment would shift focus away from research excellence, or that culture work is too challenging to consistently assess across institutions. But these arguments overlook something fundamental, that the quality of our research, the excellence we deliver as a sector, is intrinsically tied to the conditions in which it is produced. As such, reducing the weighting of PCE would send a contradictory message, that culture, collaboration, and support for people are secondary to outputs rather than two sides of the same coin.
The Stern Review and the Future Research Assessment Programme both recognised the need for a greater focus on research and innovation environments. PCE is not an optional extra, it is fundamental to research integrity, innovation, and excellence. A justifiably robust weighting reflects this reality and gives institutions the incentive to continue investing in healthy, supportive, and inclusive environments.
Universities have already made significant progress on this by developing new data systems, engaging staff, and benchmarking culture change. There is clear evidence that the proposed PCE focus has driven positive shifts in institutional behaviour. To step away from this now would risk undoing that progress and undermine the growing recognition of technical professionals as central to research and innovation success.
Including technical professionals explicitly within REF delivers real benefits for both technical professionals and their institutions, and ultimately strengthens research excellence. For technicians, recognition within the PCE element encourages universities to create the kind of environments in which they can thrive – cultures that value their expertise, provide clearer career pathways, invest in skills, and ensure they have the support and infrastructure to contribute fully to research. Crucially, REF 2029 also enables institutions to submit outputs led by technical colleagues, recognising their role in developing methods, tools, data, and innovations that directly advance knowledge.
For universities, embedding this broader community within PCE strengthens the systems REF is designed to assess. It drives safer, more efficient and sustainable facilities, improves data quality and integrity, and fosters collaborative, well-supported research environments. By incentivising investment in skilled, stable, and, empowered technical teams, the inclusion of technicians enhances the reliability, reproducibility, and innovation potential of research – ultimately raising the standard of research excellence across the institution.
From hidden to central
REF has the power not only to measure excellence, but to shape it. By maintaining a strong focus on people and culture, it can encourage institutions to build the frameworks, leadership roles, and recognition mechanisms that enable all contributors, whether technical, academic, or professional, to contribute and excel.
In doing so, REF can help normalise good practice, embed openness and transparency, and ensure that the environments underpinning discovery are as innovative and excellence driven as the research itself.
Technical professionals have always been at the heart of UK research. Their skill, creativity, and dedication underpin every discovery, innovation, and breakthrough. What’s changing now is visibility. Their contribution is increasingly recognised and celebrated as foundational to research excellence and national capability.
As REF evolves, it must continue to reward the environments that nurture, develop, and sustain technical expertise. In doing so, it can help ensure that technical professionals are not just acknowledged but firmly established at the centre of the UK’s research and innovation system – visible, recognised, and vital (as ever) to its future success.
