Research Assessment Exercise
The UK higher education funding bodies periodically assess the quality of research activity in the universities that they fund. Historically, this has been done through the Research Assessment Exercise (RAE). The RAE has now been replaced by the Research Excellence Framework (REF).
As well as providing an assessment of the quality profile of the research base in universities, the RAE provided the UK funding bodies with information to distribute funds for research selectively on the basis of quality. SFC uses both the quality ratings from the RAE and the data provided by institutions to the RAE - including numbers of academic staff, research students and research income - for this purpose.
RAE 2008
The most recent RAE was conducted in 2008. Institutions were able to submit details of research outputs, such as publications, and various other pieces of information relating to the research environment, in up to 67 subject areas (Units of Assessment).
The assessment process was coordinated by a team based at the Higher Education Funding Council for England, on behalf of SFC, HEFCE, the Higher Education Funding Council for Wales, and the Department for Employment and Learning Northern Ireland (DELNI).
Research in the RAE 2008 was assessed and classified according to a five grade profile - with 4* being the best grade where research is world-leading in terms of originality, significance and rigour, to 'unclassified' where research falls below the standard of nationally recognised work.
The results were published in December 2008 on the RAE 2008 website. The full details of submissions made by universities to the RAE, along with the sub-profiles used to calculate the RAE results for each department, were published in April 2009.
View Scottish RAE results.
RAE 2008 results
The 2008 RAE results show that every Scottish institution is undertaking world-leading research and that the proportion of Scottish research graded at the highest level has increased since the previous RAE in 2001. Over half the assessed research in Scotland is either internationally excellent or world-leading.
The definition of the 'best' research was stretched in this RAE. For a department to achieve 5* under the old system, more than half of its submitted research activity was required to be of international excellence (with the rest of national excellence). RAE 2008 requires research activity to be 'world-leading' in order to secure 4* for any part of its profile.
Across Scotland, in the disciplines of Economics, Physics, Chemistry, Nursing, Midwifery and Allied Health Professions, and some areas of Engineering, the proportion of research assessed at the highest grade has significantly improved. These are all subject areas where SFC has made significant strategic research investments, including through its research pooling initiative (see Research Pools).
Scotland's traditional strengths in Biological Sciences; Computer Science and Informatics; Agriculture, Veterinary and Food Science and areas of clinical and medical research have been sustained over the seven year assessment period with particularly strong performances in Health Services Research, Cancer Studies and Other Hospital Based Clinical Subjects.
RAE and the Research Excellence Grant
The results of the RAE 2008 are used to help distribute the main research funding to Scottish universities through the Research Excellence Grant (see Funding for Research).
Details of the model used are available in the General Fund main grant letter for 2009-10 (General Fund in support of teaching and research for higher education institutions for academic year 2009-10). The model used to distribute the Research Excellence Grant using the RAE results is available at Research Excellence Grant 2009-10. See also General Fund main grant letter AY 2010-11.
Full details on the RAE process, submissions and results can be found on
the RAE 2008 website.
For details of the results and submissions to the previous RAE, conducted in 2001, please go to RAE 2001. The 2001 RAE was used to distribute funding through the Main Quality Research Grant between 2002-03 and 2008-09. The main grant letters for these years give details of how these results were used. These are available on the Grant letters page and the SFC archive site for pre-October 2005 items.