References

You are required to provide the names, titles and contact details of nominated referees. Your referees should be senior to the grade to which you are seeking promotion. You must discuss your application with your Head of Institution and ask them to approve your choice of nominated referees prior to submission.

You should not nominate close colleagues, collaborators, co-authors or former students as referees, to ensure the references gathered provide an objective and unbiased assessment of your application. You must declare any conflict of interest or areas of collaboration by indicating this when submitting your application. As a guide, co-authoring two or three publications with a referee would not normally be considered a conflict of interest. However, a more extensive publication record together may indicate a close professional relationship and would be regarded as a conflict. Similarly, where any collaboration or co-authorship took place five or more years ago and there has been no substantial subsequent collaboration, this would not normally be considered a conflict of interest.

There may be circumstances in which exceptions to the above guidance may be appropriate, such as:

• In disciplines in which there are few academics, individuals with whom you have collaborated on research may be nominated as referees. In such cases, the nature and extent of the collaboration should be declared, and the referee will be required to declare their interest when submitting a reference.
• In disciplines that typically have a lower publication expectation, co-authoring fewer than three publications may be considered a conflict of interest. Applicants should not nominate referees with whom they have co-authored the majority of their publications, regardless of their total number of publications.

A referee’s input is critical in enabling a full and objective assessment of an applicant’s contribution. Referees are therefore requested to comment across the entire range of your duties with explicit reference to the relevant Assessment Criteria and to provide a full and frank appraisal of your suitability for promotion. 

Referees’ reports are subject to the strictest confidentiality; however, referees will be made aware that in providing a reference, they give their explicit permission for the use of that reference for consideration under the ACP 6-9 scheme.  Confidential references are normally exempt from disclosure to the applicant under the terms of data protection legislation.  Despite this, we often receive requests from applicants for copies of their references.  By default, we will not disclose references without checking with the referee first.

Additional references might be sought by the Promotion Panel in the case of a multidisciplinary application or internal nomination from cognate subject areas.

Prior to nominating a referee, you must confirm with the individual you wish to nominate that they are willing and able to provide a reference, i.e. you should contact the individual prior to providing their details on the application form. If a referee does not respond to a reference request, you may be contacted to provide alternative referee details, should there be sufficient time prior to the Promotion Panel meeting.

The table below shows the number of referees required.