How do I prepare for the UK Research Excellence Framework submission? I want to strengthen my return for the UK Research Excellence Framework (REF). My publications are fine, but how can I improve my REF "impact"?
Necessary disclaimer: I have not had to be involved in REF. This is what I summarized from my experience of the recent French evaluation system. Reading the REF guidelines, it seems pretty similar in focus (although to be honest, for all their wordiness, I prefer the very detailed REF guidelines over the French way of not explicitly detailing every rule).

So, with that out of the way, I would say there are two ways to “improve” what is essentially one’s societal impact. Both are important.

On paper

This is the short-term way of improving your impact: just present it better. Peruse the guidance documents (and possibly other guidance, including documents your local university might issue in order to help its staff), write down the relevant keywords, list all items that can be counted towards “impact”. Then, brainstorm (possibly with colleagues or friends!) for ways to tie your already existing contributions to these items. Sometimes it is just a matter of remembering stuff you didn't think of (in my case, I remembered that we had some colleagues from an industrial company who showed up at a series of tutorials).

For real

Of course, you can also try to influence your plans to include more activities of clear societal impact. There are unlimited number of things you could come up with, and they depend widely on context (which you did not give). Keeping it short and generic, here are a few good examples that I can think of (some of them more applicable in some fields, obviously):


organize panel discussions on your favorite topic, open to the general public
open lab day
“cultural heritage” research
create visualizations of your research (pictures, movies, whatever), and publish it 
interviews or other interventions in the media (even local)
being listed on experts registries: courts, journalism schools
all kinds of work with local artists
workshop or discussion groups involving academic and industrial communities
being a member of a standardization body


It looks like some sort of random list, cause I tried to list diverse activities. I'm sure others will have plenty of ideas to add!