The Research Excellence Framework (REF) is the new system for assessing the quality of research in UK higher education institutions (HEIs). It will replace the Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) and will be completed in 2014. The REF will be undertaken by the four UK higher education funding bodies. The exercise will be managed by the REF team based at HEFCE and overseen by the REF Steering Group, consisting of representatives of the four funding bodies. It will assess research that has taken place during the period 2008–2013 inclusively. The primary purpose of the REF is to produce assessment outcomes for each submission made by institutions:
The REF is important to LSBU for two main reasons. Firstly, it provides a mechanism to allocate approximately £1.6B of HEFCE Research funding. However, perhaps more importantly it is one contributing factor to the HEI leagues tables. From the previous 2008 assessment LSBU was ranked 68 out of 132 institutions that submitted to the 2008RAE.
The assessment will be made based upon the quality of research outputs (65%), the impact of research (20%) and the research environment (15%).
The environment is scored from data produced and a narrative, the impact from case studies and supporting evidence and the quality of outputs from each member of staff submitting up to four research items (i.e. journal, book, book chapter or conference papers, for the most part).
Each of these will be rated against a star rating with the following definitions:
Faculty preparations for our REF 2014 submission are well underway. For further information please contact:
Professor Graeme Maidment
Faculty Director of Research and Knowledge Transfer
Faculty of Engineering, Science and the Built Environment
London South Bank University
103 Borough Road
London SE1 0AA
Tel: 020 7815 7626
Email: maidmegg@lsbu.ac.uk
Find out more about the Research Excellence Framework from the REF 2014 website.
The results of the RAE2008 contained excellent news for the faculty. We were assessed across 2 areas, sports-related subjects and general engineering, the latter covering our core strengths across our disciplines. Our General Engineering research was the highest rated amongst London's post-1992 universities and 3rd amongst all post-1992 universities. We were in the top 20 in the country, with 95% of the work rated of international quality or above. Of this, 55% was rated internationally excellent and 5% as world leading.
Research in our sports-related subjects also excelled, with 65% of our activity of international quality or above. Of this, 20% was rated internationally excellent and 5% world-leading, putting us second amongst all London universities, and again, in the top 20 nationally.
The full 2008 RAE results are available on the RAE website.
