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REF 2029 Privacy Notice

This privacy statement applies to those providing corroboration of the impact of the University’s research, or participating in the University’s research environment, including but not limited to participants in research and engagement collaboration, representatives of partner organisations, visitors and volunteers for the purposes of REF 2029.

REF 2029 is an exercise to assess the quality of UK research and inform the selective distribution of public funds for research by the four UK higher education funding bodies; it comprises assessment of three research elements:

  • contribution to knowledge and understanding
  • engagement and impact
  • people, culture and environment.

It requires provision of data on the quality of research, its impact beyond academia, and the environment in which research is undertaken, in the form of impact case studies, and disciplinary-level and institutional-level narratives.

Data Protection

For the purpose of the General Data Protection Regulation (“GDPR”) and the Data Protection Act 2018, the ‘Data Controller’ for the processing of personal data to the REF 2029 is the University of Leeds.

The lawful basis the University relies on to process your personal data is article 6(1)(e) of the UK GDPR, which allows us to process personal data when necessary to perform our public task. Your personal data will be used to support the University’s REF 2029 submission, which as a national research assessment exercise forms part of the University’s public task for the advancement of learning by teaching and research and its dissemination by every means.

Types of data we collect about you

You may have provided information for one or more impact case studies or narrative statements as part of our submission to the REF 2029.

We will send information about impact case studies and narrative statements to UKRI for the purpose of the REF 2029 assessment, including in pilot exercises. The information will not be in coded form and your name - and details such as your job title and organisational affiliation - may be provided in these documents. We refer to this information about you as ‘your data’.

You can find further information about what data are being collected on the REF website, and in particular the detailed guidance from the last REF exercise on providing testimonies for impact case studies (PDF).

Who has access to your data

The University will share your data with employees who need to view it as part of their work in preparing the REF 2029 submission, including those working to support activities related to impact across the University. Further detail on how we process personal data can be found in the Staff Privacy Notice. 

Sharing with third parties

We may share your data in due course with the following third parties:

  • UK Research and Innovation (UKRI):  UKRI will become the ‘data controller’ for personal data submitted by us for the REF. UKRI may pass your data, or parts of it, to any of the following organisations that need it to inform the selective distribution of public funds for research and to carry out their statutory functions connected with funding higher education:
    • Department for the Economy, Northern Ireland (DfE)
    • Higher Education Funding Council for Wales (HEFCW)
    • Scottish Funding Council (SFC).
  • External reviewers: textual parts of the REF submission (impact case studies and narrative statements) may be shared with external reviewers during the process of submission development. Where we share your data with a third-party external reviewer, we will seek to share the minimum amount necessary.

The guidance, systems and processes for REF 2029 are currently under development, see the REF website.

We will provide updated information on sharing data with UKRI for assessment in REF 2029 as this becomes available, including confidentiality provisions. These are expected to align with confidentiality provisions for REF 2021, detailed in guidance on the REF 2021 website and include:

  • confidentiality agreements for panel members and assessors
  • non-publication of corroborating evidence for impact case studies
  • identifying parts of the submission as “not for publication” or requiring redactions
  • identifying conflicts of interest in assessing material
  • additional provisions for classified material.

Retaining and storing your data

We will retain your data to support the University’s REF 2029 submission, including if required for legal, accounting, or reporting requirements. Specifically, we will retain all data used in the development of the REF submission until completion of the REF audit process (expected to be January 2030), and will retain a copy of the submission for 7 years after submission, in order to facilitate future REF submissions.

Security

Your data will be held securely in accordance with the University’s policies and procedures. 

Electronic data may be transferred to, and stored at, a destination outside the United Kingdom (UK), for example, when stored on cloud-based service provider that operates outside the UK such as Microsoft.

Such transfers will only take place if one of the following applies:

  • the country receiving the data is considered by the UK to provide an adequate level of data protection;
  • the transfer is governed by approved contractual clauses.

Contact

If you wish to raise any queries or concerns about our use of your data, please contact the REF Team at leedsref@leeds.ac.uk. You can also contact our Data Protection Officer at dpo@leeds.ac.uk. More information about our use of personal data and your rights can be found on the Information Governance SharePoint webpages.

Changes to this privacy notice

We reserve the right to update this privacy policy as the requirements for REF 2029 are published, and will seek to inform you of any substantial changes.