The UK Research Assessment Exercise 2001

The Higher Education Funding Councils for England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland conduct the Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) every four to five years. The most recent results were published in December 2001 but the funding formula not announced until March 2002, amidst considerable concern about underfunding of the whole exercise and its likely future. International excellence was seen as the gold standard as assessed by individual panels, with regard to the best work being carried out anywhere in the world. Work deemed to be of international excellence was outstanding in terms of almost all these qualities. Sadly, a number of submissions claiming to be of international standard had very limited research outputs deemed to be of international excellence, although demonstrating good, solid work at national level. At international level, there was no shortage of international conference proceedings returned but the overall quality was disappointingly low and many showed little evidence of research.