The Knowledge Exchange Framework (KEF) is a national exercise introduced by Research England, with the first results released in 2021.

The aim of the KEF is to assess, evaluate, and evidence the Knowledge Exchange (KE) activities of English universities over a three-year period. Participating universities are grouped into clusters of similarly sized and focused institutions, and compared against a resulting cluster average.

The KEF is not a league table or ranking system. It evaluates the work of the university as a whole, rather than individual faculties, departments, or academics, and is designed to be low burden and light touch.

King’s has performed strongly in this year’s Knowledge Exchange Framework exercise, scoring in the highest quintile (top 20% of universities) in two of seven perspectives and being at or above the average for our cluster in six of seven perspectives.

This year King’s has maintained strong results in research partnerships, working with business, working with public and the third sector, and IP and commercialisation, and public and community engagement.

Read more in our news statement.

King's also scored highly in a number of perspectives in KEF 1, 2 and 3. Read our news releases from 2021, 2022, 2023

King’s KEF 4 results - the dashboards are freely available on the KEF website.

The KEF is a unique exercise that tracks, evaluates, and evidences the Knowledge Exchange activities of English universities. It allows us to:

• Evidence the outstanding KE work that takes place across universities, for both internal review and to public-facing entities via the freely available dashboards.
• Promote greater focus on KE, and the engagement of local, national, and international public and community groups.
• Recognise excellent KE work undertaken by colleagues and faculties at King’s, on a national stage.
• Compare our performance to peers in our cluster, in a non-competitive manner.

The KEF is predominantly built from data already collected in the Higher Education Business and Community Interaction survey (HEBCIS), with additional financial and quantitative data provided through Elsevier and Innovate UK. Five of the perspectives are entirely based on this dataset.

Two of the perspectives cannot be properly evaluated in financial and quantitative metrics, so are instead evaluated through narrative statements. These narratives are not evaluated externally, and instead function as self-evaluation exercises.

A further, shorter statement providing institutional context is also provided by each institution.

Participating universities are grouped in clusters of institutions of similar size, focus, and research strength. Each cluster is ascribed an average, and performance is judged against this average within each cluster, rather than against the sector as a whole.

Results are divided into five quintiles, ranging from 1 (very low engagement) to 5 (very high engagement).

The results of the KEF are divided into seven perspectives. Individual scores are given for each, and there is no overall total provided. The perspectives are:

• Working with business
• Working with charities and the third sector
• IP and commercialisation
• Research partnerships
• CPD and graduate startups
• Public and community engagement*
• Local growth and regeneration*

*Public and community engagement is judged entirely by a narrative statement, and the quantitative metrics used in the local growth and regeneration perspective are supplemented by a narrative statement that provides additional context, but no score.

Universities are divided according to their size, research focus, and particular strengths. Re-clustering exercises take place every two to three years, to accommodate changes in research performance and focus.

There are seven clusters in total:

• Two clusters for specialist institutions with an arts and STEM focus, named ARTS and STEM.
• Two clusters for institutions with a teaching rather than research focus, differentiated by size, named M and J.
• Three clusters for institutions with a research focus, differentiated by size and research performance, named E, X and V.

King’s belongs to Cluster V, which is defined as:

“very large, very high research intensive and broad-discipline universities undertaking significant amounts of excellent research.”

Cluster V encompasses 17 institutions in total, including Imperial, UCL, Queen Mary, Oxford and Cambridge.