The Development of the Vitae Researcher Development Framework
Evolving the Vitae Researcher Development Framework – Vitae RDF 2025
In 2009, Vitae developed the Vitae RDF in response to calls to solidify the career of ‘researcher’ into a recognised profession and to ultimately benefit researchers in their professional development.
Between 2023 –2025, a new working group has been formed to update and revise the Vitae RDF, to enhance its domain categories and descriptors.
This has been done through a process of consulting researchers, and key figures that work with them, to enable their experiences and perspectives to shape the updated Vitae RDF.
Read more about the progress of the Vitae RDF update: Evolving the Researcher Development Framework: Update from the Vitae Community Working Group.
What’s new in Vitae RDF 2025?
- Updated language and content related to key themes such as: knowledge exchange, research integrity, open research, digital and innovation skills, research culture and career mobility across sectors.
- Enhanced accessibility of the framework and centred the user experience.
- Streamlined descriptors from sixty-three to thirty-one.
- Placement of the researcher at the centre of the framework, and thereby making the individual the entry point to the framework.
- An emphasis on the importance of teams and team working to the research endeavour, and researchers place working within a range of communities.
Guidance for members to support the transition to the Vitae RDF 2025
See our guides to help members transition from the 2010 Vitae RDF to the 2025 Vitae RDF.
Vitae RDF 2025: Publication of phases
The Vitae RDF 2025 is now published in full to phase level: Vitae RDF 2025
Timeline for the Vitae RDF 2025 rollout
We will update this page and the timeline below with further events and resources as they become available.
If you have questions about the transition to the Vitae RDF 2025, please email learning.development@vitae.ac.uk
February 2025
The Vitae RDF 2025 released to statement level to Vitae member institutions.
May 2025
The Vitae RDF Community of Practice hosts its first event to support members in transitioning to RDF 2025.
June 2025
The Vitae RDF 2025 is released in full to phase level, with an accompanying online event, open to all.
July- August 2025
A period of reflection over summer months, as we prepare for full and formal launch.
September 2025
Full and formal launch of Vitae RDF 2025 in time for the 2025/26 academic year.
A brief history of the Vitae RDF
In Europe, Horizon 2020 placed firmer emphasis on strengthening researcher careers and human resources management of researchers across member states. These themes are echoed across the world.
The growing requirement to establish the career of ‘researcher’ as a valued profession, is evidenced, for example by the European Charter for Researchers and Code of Conduct for the Recruitment of Researchers (2005) and the UK Concordat to Support the Career Development of Researchers (2008).
As a result, in 2009, Vitae developed the RDF for researchers, in collaboration with the higher education sector and other stakeholders.
In 2025 an updated RDF is published to reflect current initiatives and expectations concerning researcher development.
The scope of the RDF development was to:
- present the generic descriptors common to researchers in higher education
- seek to describe characteristics of anyone conducting research in UK higher education
- contain other activities related to research that may or may not be undertaken by individual researchers within higher education
- recognise that increasingly as researchers progress through their careers they will conduct research as part of a portfolio of responsibilities in which research may or may not be the main activity
- be aspirational, yet realistic: identifying the attributes of good researchers at different phases of their development
- make no judgement about the career choices researchers make
- attempt to anticipate how the research environment may change through to 2020
- avoid any link to performance appraisal, national or local role profiles, job evaluation exercises or academic promotion procedures.
The Framework is grounded in research through interviews and focus groups with over 100 researchers and additional expertise from specialists and stakeholders. Within an iterative, interpretive design, the methods used in the project were: semi-structured interviews with researchers, focus groups, literature reviews, sector wide consultations, specialist reviews and advice and expert panel review. The interview data were analysed using a phenomenographic approach and the results were validated by an external independent advisory group of expert, established researchers.
The resulting Framework captures the knowledge, behaviours and attributes that the higher education sector, overall, has identified as significant for researchers. Therefore the core of the Framework has been determined and defined by the research profession and validated by stakeholders, such as employers and funders.
You can read more about the methodology used to develop the Vitae RDF in the Researcher-Development-Framework-RDF-Vitae-methodology-report-2012.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
The Researcher Development Framework is a widely recognised and utilised approach to researcher development which articulates the knowledge, skills, and behaviours of effective researchers. It is used for planning, promoting and supporting the personal, professional and career development of researchers. Vitae RDF 2025 is a refreshed configuration of the Vitae RDF 2010 framework, steered by the RDF working group, and designed and led by researchers and practitioners.
The new structure has researchers and people at the heart, with the inner ‘Researcher’ domain as the new entry point to the framework. The outer circle of ‘Research Communities’ is encompassing of all domains, to recognise the nature of research as a shared endeavour.
The values, skills and behaviours of effective researchers are expressed in the RDF as ‘descriptors’. The descriptors are now structured into three domains. Each of the descriptors contains up to four phases, representing distinct stages of development or levels of progression within that descriptor.
The new framework also offers a revised focus on:
- The critical importance of connections between the development of researchers and initiatives to further knowledge exchange, research integrity, open research and research culture.
- Research as a shared endeavour: to recognise that a collective responsibility exists to work towards a more inclusive, collaborative and open research culture.
- The refreshed Vitae RDF 2025 is now published in full and available: Vitae RDF 2025 alongside key mapping guidance and additional resources via an institutional login.
- The Vitae RDF 2025 was released to full phase level in June 2025. We will enter a period of reflection over the summer months. There may be some minor amendments before September, which will be detailed and shared in full. The full and final launch of Vitae RDF 2025 will take place at our September conference.
The Vitae RDF 2025 can be accessed here, alongside key mapping guidance for institutions. Vitae’s mapping document has been designed to support institutions track changes between the original and refreshed RDF. These resources can be accessed via your institutional login.
- Vitae members are invited to become involved in our new Community of Practice. The COP aims to support institutions to implement the new framework and to create a collaborative space where researcher developers and institutional leaders can share best practices and insights on implementing the Vitae RDF 2025. You can find more about the COP here.
- Vitae can provide a service to map an institution’s researcher development provision to the refreshed RDF. Members will receive a 10% discount on such services. Contact learning.development@vitae.ac.uk to find out more.
- Vitae can also provide workshops to support transition to the refreshed RDF, to engage and energize those you work with to use the framework. These services will incur a fee, as Vitae is a small not for profit organisation. Contact learning.development@vitae.ac.uk to find out more.
- An open event was held on the 10 June 2025 ‘Vitae RDF 2025 – what does it mean for you?’ This event explored how the new Vitae RDF framework is being implemented across the wider research community.
- The Vitae International Researcher Development Conference 2025 will feature Vitae RDF workshops, book now to be a part of it.
- Existing Vitae RDF materials will be updated as part of our digital transformation project and made available on our new website.
- We can provide a service to map an institution’s researcher development provision to the refreshed RDF. Contact learning.development@vitae.ac.uk to find out more.
- We can also provide workshops to support transition to the refreshed RDF, to engage and energise those you work with to use the framework. These mapping services and workshops will incur a fee, as Vitae is a small not for profit organisation. Contact learning.development@vitae.ac.uk to find out more.
- The biennial review of the RDF will be light touch and focused on any essential required changes to language and content to keep the framework up to date, accessible and usable by the R&I sector. This is unlikely to be extensive.
- The refreshed RDF has currently been published in a static format for the purpose of publication. With our new website it will be possible to share the RDF in a more interactive format and our work on this will follow the full launch.
- We are reviewing options around updating the planner, which will continue to operate as is in the meantime .
- This process of refresh, consolidation and simplification has addressed, to some extent, the need for ‘direct focus’ lens which zoom in on a particular aspect of the RDF e.g. knowledge exchange lens. We plan to allow time for Vitae RDF 2025 to embed before revisiting the need for lenses or focused skills resources.
- ‘Bridging focus’ lenses providing a bridge between the RDF and an existing framework, set of professional standards or protocols will be revisited with existing partners to explore scope, need and interest for an updated lens.