About the RAE
York's RAE results
The Research Assessment Exercise is a UK-wide assessment of the quality of research in universities undertaken by expert review panels. Each subject area was assessed under ‘units of assessment’.
The RAE is undertaken on behalf of Government by the funding councils for higher education. The 2008 RAE was the sixth and last assessment of its kind. From 2009 the Research Excellence Framework (REF) will be introduced.
The 2008 RAE
The scoring system for the 2008 RAE took the following form:
- Quality ‘profiles’, not a single ‘score’ for each subject
- A two-tiered panel structure with 15 main panels and 67 sub-panels
- No information on the percentage of staff submitted
- An assessment in each profile of outputs, environment and esteem. Each main panel can chose how to weight these elements in the overall profile
Evidence used in the RAE
There is a common set of evidence for all subjects
- Research active staff
- Research outputs (usually four per staff member, produced from 1 January 2001 to 31 December 2007)
- Research students and studentships
- External research income
- Research structure and strategies
- Indicators of esteem