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 his annual budget speech that the government intends to simplify the way it funds academic research. Pending a consultation exercise through 2006, the government wishes to replace the United Kingdom's unique research assessment exercise (RAE).¹ The most radical proposal is to scrap peer assessment of the quality of each university's research, a cornerstone of the exercise, and to introduce assessment based mainly on metrics—effectively performance indicators.

Possible metrics include research income, publications, citations, and numbers of research students, all of which correlated well with scores achieved in previous exercises.¹ Preparations for RAE2008 are well underway and will proceed as planned, but the exercise will now incorporate a shadow system, using metrics alongside the panel based peer review system. It is now entirely possible that the allocation of research funding after 2008 will be based on metrics assessment rather than the . . . [Full text of this article]

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

Department of Medicine, University of Birmingham

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This article has been cited by other articles:

• Charlton, B. G, Andras, P. (2006). How should we rate research?: Counting number of publications may be best research performance measure.. BMJ 332: 1214-1215 [Full text]  
• Caan, W. (2006). How should we rate research?: Pedigree: paternity and progeny.. BMJ 332: 1215-1215 [Full text]  

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