Talk:Research Assessment Exercise

Rankings
These rankings are meaningless without an indication of how they were arrived at. Are the average ratings 6.69, 6.68 etc. out of 7? The document from which these numbers come has no such indication.

Given that the RAE assesses universities at department level, surely such rankings should be given at that level? I would suggest that this section should be removed. --Albinoduck 15:02, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

Moved this section here from the article

==Controversy==
 * The RAE remains controversial in some Universities; it is believed by some academics to be a sham exercise. The most commonly cited issue is that the total pool of money available for research funding typically does not increase even if more universities achieve higher RAE scores.  Thus, no matter how research improves, the total number of universities receiving funding remains the same.  The RAE is then weighted to ensure that the universities who do receive funding are those politically accepted as being established research centres, such as the Russell Group members.


 * Many changes made to the RAE are interpreted in the light of this view. For example, cynics argue that, after the established research centres were awarded 5's in the 1992 RAE, a number of other universities improved their research standards to attempt to earn extra money.  Had the RAE proceeded as before, these universities would have received 5's in the 1996 and thus qualified for extra funding, but this could not be permitted to happen since no extra money was actually made available: thus, the 5* grade was created for the research centres, moving the goalposts out of the reach of those universities who attempted to improve.  Equally, cynics argue that the 2008 variation of assessing individual researchers is designed to reward universities who employ many members of staff in pure research posts - which, "coincidentally", corresponds to the same round of research centres who employed pure research staff using the funding gotten from high ratings in the previous RAE.


 * The RAE is also criticised for how it assesses research quality. Given the scale of the exercise and a desire to quantify research quality, much of the RAE relies on simple measures, like the impact factor of the journal in which a paper is published. This is argued to be a poor measure of research quality and distorting of academic activity.

End of section moved from article

It strikes me that this section is little more than a POV screed full of weasel words and is utterly without references. I imagine some of this can in fact be referenced by using media sources and appropriately rewriting the section. I imagine that much of it cannot be, other than in mutterings during coffee breaks. As it stands, it falls well short of WP:NPOV and WP:NOR, and makes no effort in reaching WP:V. I'm not being biased here, just firm. When/if time permits, I will try to recraft this more appropriately. -Splash talk 22:07, 31 December 2005 (UTC)

Soap Box
Well I think that there are a lot of academics out there who want to get on their soap box about the "failings" of the RAE, I think as long as any Wikipedian contributions to the subject are properly referenced, then this is in keeping with the spirit of the thing. Which hopefully this article will evolve into. —Preceding unsigned comment added by RapidAssistant (talk • contribs) 08:49, 28 June 2006
 * I am not sure how to interpret this. But in any case, it doesn't matter how thoroughly cited something is, it cannot be allowed to become a "soap box" (see WP:NOT, point 1). The contents of the article should be balanced, neutral and factual. Any soapboxing should be promptly edited out. -Splash - tk 15:48, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

xref to STEM fields, and suggest changing "Medicine" to "Mathematics"
in the section on "Planned changes to RAE system", it mentions "STEM" fields. The mention of "STEM" here should probably have a cross-reference to STEM. However, that page has an entry for

STEM fields (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics)

(STEM fields) which says that the "M" stands for "Mathematics" instead of "Medicine" (as stated here). My suggestions:
 * 1) change the mention of "STEM" here, to have (be) a cross-reference to STEM) ;
 * 2) change the word "Medicine" to "Mathematics"

(any comments?)

Mike Schwartz 23:30, 17 July 2007 (UTC)

The above has been done. (tentatively). I hope it is right. I noticed that after the mention of STEM, there was a list of "other" subject areas. In that list, I changed "Mathematics" to "medicine", by analogy with the other change ("Medicine" to "Mathematics") mentioned above. Any comments?

Mike Schwartz 23:43, 17 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Can we have a reference to the HFCE announcement on that rather than guessing what they meant. My guess is probably they did not intend to imply assessment of maths by metrics. Certainly the RAE pure and applied maths panel in 2008 states very clearly that they will not use any such measures, and there is generally an opinion in the UK mathematics community that these measures are flawed and open to manipulation. If there has been such an an announcement I would expect to see fur flying by now. So either cite a source or remove this section as speculation.Billlion 06:53, 18 July 2007 (UTC)
 * I checked the Guardian article and it clearly indicates that it understands Medicine to be in stem. I have reversed maths and Medicine. Unless anyone can find a more authorative source on what Gordon meant!Billlion 06:59, 18 July 2007 (UTC)

Relation of the RAE to Academics' Funding
It strikes me as very odd that the article does not (in its current form) seem to mention how the RAE and the results of the RAE might have implication for both the careers of Researchers and also the funding that they receive. Surely this is one of the most important functions and roles of the RAE (that it provides an indication of how much funding should be directed towards particular departments or even individual researchers)?

Further, the article does not seem to mention the names of particular individuals who are important for the purposes of having created the RAE and who are responsible for administering the RAE - surely this is something which should be mentioned within the article too?

Has any research submission to the RAE ever found commercial application? Does the RAE currently provide incentive towards capitalising upon the intellectual property/research carried out within universities? These are just a few relevant parts of the article that do not seem to be commented upon.

ConfusciousSays (talk) 20:29, 7 January 2008 (UTC)
 * The RAE is quite a controversial subject and anything added to it neads to be WP:NPOV and WP:VER. If there is a study published on the effect of the RAE on careers of researchers then we should cite it. As to who thought of it that would be interesting. I always assumed it was dreamed up by nameless civil servants. As to the third point. Yes almost certinaly RAE submitted research has been commercialised.  Universities in the UK do quite a bit of commercial exploitation at least of scientific ideas. But as only four papers are submitted to the RAE there will be plenty of commercialised work not submitted too. I could easily give examples, but it would constitue WP:OR and not be of much help either. Unless there is some sort of systematic survey of RAE imapct on commercialisation there is nothing we can put in the article.  That said the point of the RAE was not to support commercialisation of reseach, and of course there is plenty of incentives including generating revinue and research funding that does. I personally would be more interested, if someone can find a published study, is if teh RAE has succeeded in supporting basic science and fundamental research, and the impact of closure and expansionof university departments as a result of the RAE.Billlion (talk) 19:43, 8 January 2008 (UTC)

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Needs updating
Very out of date 86.18.148.124 (talk) 08:23, 29 November 2022 (UTC)