Assessing Research Excellence: Lessons from the UK?
28 September 2011, by Professor Jeroen Huisman
The UK introduced its first Research Selectivity Exercise in 1986 and since then the country has had five Research Assessment Exercises (RAEs) and is now preparing for the Research Excellence Framework (REF) 2014. Emerging from a context in which the exercise was meant to selectively fund research, it gradually developed into a re-allocation exercise with the objectives to gain insight in the research quality across the sector and disciplines and to allocate research funds to research groups that have shown the highest quality. Despite changes over the years regarding the definitions of quality standards, the frequency of assessments, but particularly with respect to the measurement of quality, key elements remained the same...
