REF submission deadline approaching

At the New Insights into Computational Intractability workshop, I find that some of our distinguished overseas speakers are blissfully unaware (or maybe: blissfully vaguely-aware) of ongoing work on submissions to the Research Excellence Framework. They’re unfamiliar with the heavy-duty administrative machinery that UK universities have set up to process the submissions, which will finally fall silent on the deadline of November 29th.  There are gaps in their knowledge about the functional dependence of the number of researchers a ‘unit of assessment’ (i.e., academic department) can submit, on the number of impact cases. They don't know that “evidence” is a verb, not just a noun. They don’t know the word “REF-able”. And so on.

My advice: it’s a time to indulge your UK colleagues when they gripe about REF. Especially if they’ve taken on any kind of responsibility for preparing a department’s REF submission. Buy them drinks. Appear sympathetic and remind that it’ll all be over in a few weeks.