Research Assessment Exercise (RAE)

Approximately every five years the UK funding bodies in England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland carry out a Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) to assess the quality of research taking place in higher education institutions across the UK. The first RAE was held in 1986. The most recent took place in 2001. The results of the current RAE will be published in 2008. The results of the RAE are used to allocate over £1 billion in the UK each year for research purposes.

The RAE is carried out through a process of peer review by panels of 9-18 experts mainly from the academic community, but also including representatives of industry and commerce) covering different subject areas. Research is allocated to one of a number of 'units of assessment' (UoA), which are discipline based (e.g. Philosophy, Chemistry, History).

Higher education institutions can make a submission to as many of the UoAs as they choose. Each submission consists of information about the academic unit being assessed, details of 'research-active' staff, up to four publications or other research outputs for each research-active member of staff, research student data, details of research income, and information regarding the research environment and esteem indicators.

In previous RAEs the panels awarded a quality rating on a 7-point scale (1, 2, 3b, 3a, 4, 5 and 5*) according to the level to which they judged that the research reached levels of national or international excellence.

The four higher education funding bodies (Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE), the Scottish Funding Council (SFC), the Higher Education Funding Council for Wales (HEFCW) and the Department for Employment and Learning, Northern Ireland (DEL) use these quality ratings to determine the grants for research that they allocate to each higher education institution.

For the 2008 exercise, the 7-point quality scale has been abolished in favour of quality profiles which will show the proportions of research activity in a submission judged to meet each of five quality levels, where 4* is the highest and Unclassified is the lowest. This system will show the range of research activity and quality levels in a submission, rather than simply providing one overall grade, therefore allowing the funding bodies to identify pockets of excellence. Results of the RAE 2008 will be published in December 2008.