Sussex makes submission to Research Excellence Framework
The University of Sussex has submitted its entry to the Research Excellence Framework (REF), the new system for assessing the quality of research in UK higher education institutions.
The deadline today (Friday 29 November) for UK universities to submit to the REF concludes five years of detailed preparation at Sussex.
Sussex’s submission comprises:
- 1,735 research outputs (e.g. books and journal articles) carried out by 523 academic staff
- 756 PhD degrees
- £134m of research income
- 118 documents containing 547 pages of narrative.
Replacing the Research Assessment Exercise (RAE), the REF is run by the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) on behalf of the UK’s four research funding bodies.
It will be used to decide how £1.8bn of funding for research is distributed each year to institutions in the UK.
Professor Michael Davies, Pro-Vice-Chancellor (Research), says: “I would like to thank colleagues from across the University for their hard work in preparing this submission.
“I know that it has been time-consuming and, at times, frustrating but I think it has been worth it - Sussex is an institution with many world-class researchers and strong research units and our submission gives a solid account of this.
“A good result in the REF will be central to Sussex being rightly recognised as a leading research-intensive university and is also likely to be worth to us around £100 million in direct income over the next five years.”
The results, to be published in December 2014, will rate the quality of research at Sussex, and all universities in the UK, as either four star (world-leading), three star (internationally excellent), two star (recognised internationally), one star (recognised nationally) or unclassified.
The last RAE in 2008 rated over 90 per cent of Sussex research activity as world-leading, internationally excellent or internationally recognised, confirming the University among the leading 30 research universities in the UK, on a simple average across all scores.
Professor Davies adds that lessons learned from preparing for the REF are already changing the way that the University is managing research. He says: “Throughout the course of our REF preparations, the Steering Group has noted that the changes to research assessment represented by the REF require a degree of culture change within the institution, alongside a change of expectations towards the exercise itself.”
“Developing research outputs of the highest quality requires a planned and long-term strategy from the University, the Unit of Assessment, and the individual academic.
“Sussex has much potential for further development of research excellence and our new strategy for 2013-18 sets out how we plan to deliver this.”