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Impact Factors and research quality

The majority of academic departments in the UK are currently working feverishly to collate the data required for the Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) which takes place in 2008. This exercise occurs every few years (the last one was in 2001) and requires expert ‘panels’ to rate the ‘quality’ of each department or group of researchers on three aspects of academic life: research output, research environment, and esteem. The importance of this exercise is that the results, in the form of an ascending rating scale (1, 2, 3b, 3a, 4, 5, 5*), fix the income to the research entity from the higher education funding councils (HEFC) for England, Scotland, Northern Ireland, and Wales. HEFC funding is fundamentally important in providing financial support for universities and paid out more than £1 billion for academic research following the 2001 RAE in which over 48 000 researchers were evaluated in 2598 research group submissions from 173 institutions. Departments with ratings of less than 5 are in serious danger of dramatic reductions in funding. Thus most universities and departments work hard to ensure that the highest grade is awarded. Strategies to do this involve ensuring that the most research-active staff, especially those new ones who have been wooed with the promise of facilities and remuneration, are in post on the due census day and that measures of quality have been carefully reviewed and thoroughly adhered to. Depending on the panel that carries out the appraisal the three assessment characteristics (output, environment, and esteem) are given different degrees of importance. The Epidemiology and Public Health panel, to which my research group will be submitted, rates the research output as 75% of the total grade, the environment as 20%, and esteem as 5%. Some of my colleagues will be assessed by an Engineering panel which will rate the output as 50% and the environment and esteem as 25% each. There is not always a perfect match between the panel title and the research focus of any particular group. So, whilst the research group that I lead is entitled ‘Human Development and Ageing’ no equivalent assessment panel exists and we are submitting to the nearest match. This imperfect match is true of many research groups and is viewed as a weakness in the system that may be deleterious to some research groups, particularly interdisciplinary groups. Measures of the quality of the research environment are not too difficult to quantify. They include the number of graduate students supervised by each academic and how many finish their doctoral studies within the recommended 3 years. Within this environment, research income is equally easy to monitor although it is the amount spent within the time line rather than the amount raised that is important. (Obtaining the £10 million mega-grant just prior