Faculty of Arts & Social Sciences - PBRF

PBRF Research Outputs and Quality Assurance

The most important and substantive component of the Evidence Portfolio is the listing and description of your research outputs. You need to understand what constitutes research, how research outputs are coded, the process of quality assurance and how to effectively document the research outputs you nominate as your most important.

One of the changes in the 2012 process is the importance of submitting and capturing as much information as possible in digital form. It is still possible (and sometimes appropriate) to submit paper copy with the up to date coversheet (please make sure you use one of these rather than the older ones we see from time to time!).

Research Cover Sheet - Creative
Research Cover Sheet - Other

One of the important issues we need to address in the entry of data about research outputs is the quality assurance that lies behind them. This document is an extract from the 2012 PBRF Guidelines that describes the QA process. The key task is to make sure you provide clear evidence of the process through which your research has been assured. Note it will be different in different panel areas and the Panel Specific Guidelines (released in 2011) will be helpful. The FASS Quality Assured Journals list is useful; if you are publishing in one of these journals you don’t need to provide QA evidence as we already hold it.