Higher Education Funding Council England (HEFCE)
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RAE2008 submissions published

The content of submissions made to 2008 Research Assessment Exercise (RAE2008) was yesterday published on the RAE2008 web-site. These are the submission data that the 67 panels of experts examined to determine the results of the RAE2008.

All of the information submitted to the 67 units of assessment is included, other than personal and contractual data (note 2), and items marked as ‘confidential’ where relevant.  This includes:

    • RA0/RA1 staff information
    • RA2             research outputs
    • RA3a and b      research students and studentships
    • RA4             research income
    • RA5a            research environment and esteem indicators.

The results of the RAE, announced in December 2008, confirmed the dominant position that universities and colleges in the United Kingdom hold in international research. Those results demonstrate that 54 per cent of the research conducted by 52,400 staff submitted by 159 universities and colleges is either 'world-leading' or 'internationally excellent'.

Notes
1. RAE2008 was a UK-wide exercise covering 159 universities and higher education colleges.
2. RA5b will not be published because it contains personal information about staff submitted.
3. The information in the submissions cover the whole of the UK.
4. The primary purpose of RAE2008 was to produce quality profiles for each submission of research activity made by higher education institutions. The results are used by the four UK funding bodies to determine the funding for research to the institutions which they fund from 2009-10. Over £1.5 billion will be allocated annually from 2009-10.

5. The RAE is a discipline-based expert review process in which judgements on the quality of research are made by researchers and experts active in that discipline.

6. Panels assessing the quality of research operated in a two-tier panel structure. There were 15 main panels and 67 sub-panels, comprising 1,000 panel members. Panel members were academics or users of research. As well as reviewing more than 200,000 pieces of research work submitted for assessment, panel members examined the data being published today.

7. The submissions data are available on the RAE2008 web-site at http://submissions.rae.ac.uk/submissions/

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