How should we rate research?

doi:10.1136/bmj.332.7548.983

BMJ 2006;332:983-984 (29 April), doi:10.1136/bmj.332.7548.983

Editorial

How should we rate research?

The UK's current system can be improved but shouldn't be discarded

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

Last month the UK chancellor, Gordon Brown, announced in hisannual budget speech that the government intends to simplifythe way it funds academic research. Pending a consultation exercisethrough 2006, the government wishes to replace the United Kingdom'sunique research assessment exercise (RAE).¹ The most radicalproposal is to scrap peer assessment of the quality of eachuniversity's research, a cornerstone of the exercise, and tointroduce assessment based mainly on metrics—effectivelyperformance indicators.

Possible metrics include research income, publications, citations,and numbers of research students, all of which correlated wellwith scores achieved in previous exercises.¹ Preparations forRAE2008 are well underway and will proceed as planned, but theexercise will now incorporate a shadow system, using metricsalongside the panel based peer review system. It is now entirelypossible that the allocation of research funding after 2008will be based on metrics assessment rather than the . . . [Full text of this article]

F D Richard Hobbs, professor

Department of Primary Care and General Practice, University of Birmingham, Birmingham B15 2TT
(f.d.r.hobbs@bham.ac.uk)

Paul M Stewart, professor

Department of Medicine, University of Birmingham

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