Research Workload Allocation (RWA) process

This guidance describes the Research Workload Allocation (RWA) process operated by Liverpool John Moores University. It allocates time for research activity from the University’s 550-hour teaching time model. This document describes the processes undertaken, including staff eligibility, mechanisms and decision-making, and outcomes.

Overview

  • The University uses the RWA process to assign staff time to conduct independent research. The RWA process is a positive institutional mechanism to support staff in their research and knowledge exchange ambitions. By its nature it is limited to assessing data already produced but it affects workload allocation in the next academic year.
  • The outcome of the RWA in the two Faculties is that staff will be assigned one of the following allocations of time to conduct independent research:
    • 160 hours per academic year (referred to as ‘Status 1’)
    • 120 hours per academic year (referred to as 'Status 2’)
    • 80 hours per academic year (referred to as ‘Status 3’)
    • All staff will receive an allocation of time to engage in scholarly activity to support delivery and development of curriculum content, assessment, or other student experiences, such as research-informed teaching (25 hours). This scholarly activity time is in addition to any awarded time.
    • These statuses are in addition to time for formal academic administrative roles allocated from the 550-hour model, for example Head of a Research Centre or Institute or REF Unit of Assessment Co-ordinator.
  • The RWA process does not determine staff eligibility for submission to REF 2029 or other external assessment processes.
  • The use of number-coded statuses does not imply an assessment of researcher or research quality.
  • At each occurrence of the phrase ‘School Director’ in this document, read ‘or, where relevant, Pan-University Research Institute Director’ as supplementary.

Eligibility

  • Staff who are employed on Teaching and Research contracts whose job descriptions include an expectation of research activity are eligible for School Directors to consider their time allocation within the RWA process.
  • For these staff, LJMU School Directors will decide on entry into the RWA process based on their discretionary assessment of School need.
  • Staff with Teaching and Research contracts who are enrolled on Level 8 qualifications (for example PhD or Professional Doctorate) will receive a local allocation of research training time to work on their qualification(s). This allocation will be 80 hours per academic year.
  • Staff who are employed on Research-only contracts are not eligible for time allocation within the RWA process. Their contracted time is already fully dedicated to research activity.
  • For staff employed on Research-only contracts, independence is assessed annually under the university’s Research Excellence Framework 2029 Code of Practice and not within the RWA process.

Timeline

  • The process timeline is designed to standardise the timing of outcomes for staff while enabling operational flexibility. In a typical year, it aims to have confirmed decisions ready in April for communication.
  • Local School and Faculty administrators will typically collect relevant data in the period December-to-March ahead of the April decision-making meeting. The data include application, award, and income data from LJMU research costing and pricing and finance systems. The data will be to the most recent financial year end (31 July of the outgoing year). Staff may supply information about funding applications in train as additional contextual information if the application has been delayed beyond year-end for reasons beyond the staff member’s control.
  • The administrators will confirm these data with academic staff in March and request any voluntary contextual information from the academic staff. In February-April, each School Director and the relevant Unit of Assessment Co-ordinators will develop the School’s criteria for differentiating between RWA statuses. Academic staff will return confirmation of their data and supply additional contextual data by the end of March.
  • The meetings to determine statuses will typically happen in early April. Over the course of April, the decisions will be checked, recorded, and then communicated to academic staff.

Research Workload Allocation (RWA) process

  • The RWA process is an annual staff time allocation process. It occurs at Faculty level. It is led by the Faculty PVC, School Directors, REF Unit of Assessment Co-ordinators and other relevant staff as appropriate.
  • Within the RWA meeting the Faculty PVC, School Directors and Unit of Assessment Co-ordinators as well as any other relevant staff attending will review individual staff members’ research income generation and other relevant activities to determine their appropriate status. The review will be based on the last four academic years, including the year of the review taking place. It can include contextual statements. The review period will roll forward each year, so a review one year later will have three years’ overlap with the review conducted in the previous year.
  • The criteria for each status are as follows:
    • RWA Status 3: The staff member is expected within the School to undertake independent research.
    • RWA Status 2: The staff member is pursuing a programme of research that will advance their primary research field. This will typically be through submitting external grant and project applications to undertake funded research and knowledge exchange activity.
    • RWA Status 1: The staff member is developing a substantial programme of research and knowledge exchange activity, typically by supporting their research and knowledge exchange activity with significant external funding.
  • The criteria assessed will be reviewed relative to each academic discipline. In the data collection period prior to the April meetings, each School Director and the relevant Unit of Assessment Co-ordinator will develop the School’s criteria for differentiation between the statuses.
  • The assessment will reflect Liverpool John Moores University’s status as a signatory to the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment and the Coalition to Advance Research Assessment, and the LJMU Statement on Responsible Research Assessment.
  • Where multiple Schools administer a discipline, the School Directors and Unit of Assessment Co-ordinators will collaborate to standardise their consistent approach to RWA assessment. Each discipline area will have consistent and agreed criteria for differentiating the statuses.
  • School Directors and Unit of Assessment Co-ordinators will share their baseline criteria for visibility between Schools within their Faculty. The School Directors will also email the baselines to the Head of Research Excellence and Research Strategy in Research and Innovation Services no later than two weeks before the RWA meeting. The Head of Research Excellence and Research Strategy will collect them for potential future audit.
  • The external grant capture data will be provided by Finance. The Finance directorate can only collate data to the end of the last financial year. School administration will send these data to all RWA process entrants at the start of the data collection process. Past financial activity will be assessed based on the value of in-year spend per financial year at Liverpool John Moores University, not the total awarded value of the grant.
  • Leadership of a contract research project will be counted as research activity.
  • Leadership of a funded professional practice activity, such as a narrow-scope evaluation, will be counted as professional activity rather than as research activity. Please see the appendix below for more information.
  • School administrators will provide all staff with details of the external research income data that they have collected through LJMU financial reporting systems.
  • Staff can comment on all the data pertinent to themselves that will be assessed at the RWA meeting. Staff may provide narrative contextual information if relevant.
  • Staff may provide contextual information about personal circumstances that have affected or do affect their ability to conduct research activity in the specific assessment time window. The information can be ‘high level’ (such as ‘maternity leave’ or ‘extended sickness absence’) and will be treated in the strictest confidence. The information is provided voluntarily.
  • The School’s criteria for differentiation between the statuses will be pro-rated for staff working on reduced FTE or who have personal circumstances which have affected their ability to conduct research activity as described above.
  • Work can be conducted as a Principal Investigator or Co-Investigator. Where data are available, statuses will not distinguish between these roles. The university encourages researcher collaboration to broaden the depth of inquiry and increase interchange of perspectives and skills.

Confirmation procedure

  • In April, the Faculty Associate Dean for Research and Knowledge Exchange (ADR) will convene a sub-group of the Faculty Research and Knowledge Exchange Committee (FRKEC) or its dedicated equivalent to meet to assess the provisional RWA statuses.
  • In this meeting, the Faculty PVC, School Directors, Unit of Assessment Co-ordinators, and other staff on Faculty RWA panels will use their best judgement on the totality of information provided to assign a provisional RWA status.
  • As far as practicable, the convened sub-group will be constituted to avoid gender imbalance and to ensure a fair representation of the research fields included in the School and Faculty.
  • The Faculty ADR will open the sub-group meeting by sharing all the baseline criteria provided by School Directors and Unit of Assessment Co-ordinators. This is to ensure members understand the criteria they are reviewing against to maintain consistency. The sub-group will then review all provisional RWA statuses among the Faculty’s staff to ensure all information has been consistently considered.
  • To support feedback and consistency, where there is debate on an individual’s RWA status, the Faculty ADR and committee will reach a majority decision and will record the reasons for this decision in the meeting. The record empowers transparency and underpins any potential audit.

Outcomes and communications

  • This process does not determine the volume of research outputs that staff might contribute to the REF 2029 submission.
  • All staff RWA will be calculated in hours relevant to the FTE of their contract.
  • Once statuses are confirmed by the FRKEC sub-group, the Faculty and School administrators will record the RWA status decisions in a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet. The spreadsheet is provided by Research and Innovation Services as a template. The administrators will save the spreadsheet in both Excel and PDF format. They will date-stamp the PDF to serve in a potential audit.
  • School Directors will inform staff of the confirmed RWA statuses within three weeks of the FRKEC sub-group meeting. They will use a standard letter for this purpose. They will send the letter as an email attachment to the entrant’s Liverpool John Moores University email account.
  • Appeals over allocated RWA status are heard by the Faculty ADR and relevant School Director. Where the appeal is directly related to Equality, Diversity, and Inclusivity, the Faculty ADR and School Director will be joined by a member of the University’s Diversity and Inclusivity team. Appellants may be accompanied by an advisor (such as a colleague or a trades union representative).

Date of this guidance

This guidance note was published online on 3 July 2026

The guidance will be updated as required. Updates will be published online.

Appendix: Evaluations

  • This guidance treats leadership of a contract research project as research activity, not as professional activity. However, it treats leadership of a professional practice activity, such as a narrow-scope evaluation, as professional activity rather than as research activity.
  • An evaluation becomes research when it seeks to answer questions with broader applicability than the initial context, uses methodological rigour to generate new knowledge, and shares findings that advance understanding beyond the specific scenario wherein it was funded.
  • To interpret the above, decision-makers are advised to apply the rubric below to their best knowledge. Indicatively, all questions must be answered with ‘Yes’ for the work to be seen as research.
    • Does the activity address a gap in knowledge and generate new insights, not just assess whether a specific program/service worked?
    • By quantity or weight, are most of the findings generalisable beyond the immediate organisation or service being evaluated?
    • Are there clear research questions or hypotheses, not just descriptive monitoring or outcome measurements? Please note hypothesising after the results are known (‘HARKing’) is not allowable practice.
    • Does the activity show originality? This question refers to using existing knowledge in comparative/experimental ways to create new understanding, not routine assessment.
    • Does the activity exceed routine activities such as simple evaluations, quality assurance, and data processing alone, or training outcome reviews focused only on that program?
    • Does the activity involve a full research process, such as proceeding from systematic investigation through to dissemination of findings, and not just an analysis of existing data?
    • Does the activity show methodological rigour and complex design that allows for transferable insights?