How the RAE2008 Works
1) What is the RAE?
The RAE (Research Assessment Exercise) is carried out approximately every seven years to evaluate the quality of research undertaken by British higher education institutions (HEIs). The Assessment is carried out on behalf of the four UK higher education funding councils (HEFCE, SHEFC, HEFCW, DEL).
Each HEI submits information according to a number of criteria for each subject area (known as a Unit of Assessment – UOA) in which the HEI has research expertise. Every UOA submission is evaluated by a specialist peer review panel to produce a quality assessment.
The quality assessments are used to determine the allocation of research funding that each higher education institution receives from the funding councils. The institutions with the most highly-ranked units of assessment will receive the highest level of quality-research funding (QR).
RAE2008 will be the last quality assessment undertaken in this way: from 2009, a new system called the Research Excellence Framework (REF) will be developed.
2) How does the RAE work?
- HEIs make submissions to the UOAs in which they specialise
- One submission = a complete set of forms returned by an HEI in any of the 67 UOAs.
- All submissions are reviewed by expert panels, who make judgements against a pre-defined quality assessment.
- Each panel has a statement detailing its criteria and working methods. There are 15 main panels, 67 sub-panels, and about 1,000 panel members.
- Each HEI is provided with a quality assessment for each of the UOAs to which they submitted.
3) What are GPA, Market Share, Research Power and ECR?
What is the Grade Point Average?
The Grade Point Average (GPA) is calculated by taking the average grade from the five quality categories for each unit of assessment. The five categories range from 4* through to 'unclassified'. In the methodology, each category is weighted in the following way to extract the GPA score:
| Category | Weighting |
| 4* | 4 |
| 3* | 3 |
| 2* | 2 |
| 1* | 1 |
| Unclassified | 0 |
What is the Market Share?
The Market Share is calculated by multiplying the number of staff submitted to each unit of assessment (UoA) by the UoA’s Grade Point Average.
What is Research Power?
Research Power is the market share of an institution divided by the highest ranking institution's sector market share. ie, Oxford, the highest ranking insitution, is scored 1; every other institution's market share is divided by this figure.
What are ECRs?
Early Career Researchers (ECRs) are staff in the first three years of their academic career.
4) What criteria are used to assess each submission?
Quality assessments for each submission are developed around three areas of research activity:
- Outputs – journal publications, books, artefacts and performances that demonstrate the quality of the research undertaken.
- Research environment – the structures, strategic directions and policies implemented to create an environment that sustains and develops quality research.
- Personal esteem – indicators of the esteem in which individual researchers are held within their academic communities
5) How does RAE2008 differ from RAE2001?
RAE2008 has changed quite substantially in its structure. 2008 will see the introduction of 'profiles' for the quality assessment (see below for definition), and a two-tiered review panel structure comprising 15 main panels and 67 sub-panels.
The way you read the results will also change. Instead of receiving one score for the assessment from each UOA (in 2001, UOAs were given one overall rating ranging from a maximum of 5* through to 1), there will instead be a ‘quality profile’, where the research output for each UOA is accorded a percentage score against a range of quality levels (ranging from a maximum of 4* through to ‘unclassified’).
In practice, this means that research activity in, for example, Psychology might receive 35% in the 4* category, 10% in 3*, 40% in 2*, 10% in 1* and 5% unclassified. (See next section for more information on quality profiles.)
6) How are quality assessments defined?
Throughout 2008, sub-panels† have assessed RAE submissions against published criteria and then made recommendations to the main panels for endorsement. These judgments will indicate the proportion of the research that meets each of the four quality levels or is unclassified, taking into account the research outputs, research environment and indicators of esteem. The quality levels are described as:
| Level | Summary | Full Description |
| Four star (4*) | World-leading†† | World-leading in terms of originality, significance and rigour. |
| Three star (3*) | Internationally excellent | Internationally excellent in terms of originality, significance and rigour but which falls short of the highest standards of excellence. |
| Two star (2*) | International | Recognised internationally in terms of originality, significance and rigour. |
| One star (1*) | National | Recognised nationally in terms of originality, significance and rigour. |
| Unclassified | Unclassified | Falls below the standard of nationally recognised work. Or work which does not meet the published definition of research for the purposes of this assessment. |
Each HEI will quality profiles for each unit of assessment, showing the percentage of research classified in each of the quality levels.
Notes
† Sub-panels will use their professional judgement to form a view about the quality profile of the research activity described in each submission, taking into account all the evidence presented. Their recommendations will be endorsed by the main panel in consultation with the sub-panel. There is a common set of evidence used for all subjects:
- Research active staff
- Research outputs (usually four per staff member produced between 01/01/2001 and 31/12/2007)
- Research students and studentships
- External research income
- Research structure and strategies
- Indicators of esteem
†† ‘World-leading’ quality denotes an absolute standard of quality in each unit of assessment. ‘World leading’, ‘internationally’ and ‘nationally’ in this context refer to quality standards. They do not refer to the nature or geographical scope of particular subjects, nor to the locus of research nor its place of dissemination, for example, in the case of ‘nationally’, to work that is disseminated in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.
