http://education.guardian.co.uk/higher/books/story/0,10595,869621,00.html The "Education" section of The Guardian 7th Jan 2003 includes Public Library of Science [page 9] and RAE Review [pp.12-13] see also http://www.rareview.ac.uk http://education.guardian.co.uk/higher/comment/story/0,9828,869578,00.html
Adrian Smith -----Original Message----- From: Stevan Harnad [mailto:har...@ecs.soton.ac.uk] Sent: 12 December 2002 20:43 To: jisc-developm...@jiscmail.ac.uk Subject: Re: UK Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) review Below are excerpts from some articles that appeared in the Times Higher Education Supplement on December 6 2002 about potential changes in the UK Research Assessment Exercise. The articles are not online, and I have only excerpted the passages pertinent to my own proposal for making the RAE simpler and cheaper, and at the same time more explicit and accurate. [The article doesn't mention an essential component of my proposal -- the online standardized RAE Curriculum Vitae for every researcher http://www.eprints.org/self-faq/#research-funders-do which would include other measurable indicators of research impact, such as numbers of research students and grants (which are themselves correlated with citation impact): The scientometric research assessment tools are described at: http://opcit.eprints.org/ ] Excerpts from: RAE review by Mandy Garbner Times Higher Education Supplement 06 December 2002 The research assessment exercise review panel wants to see radical change... Besides funding, the RAE has been criticised for the way assessment is carried out... Sir Gareth Roberts, who is chairing the Joint Funding Bodies' review of the RAE, says... that few people contributing to the consultation on its future have come up with radical ways of changing it... [T]he review wants something more radical than tinkering [such as changing the way panel members are appointed]. It focuses on creating a "less burdensome assessment method", rather than on funding. One of the more radical proponents of change is Southampton University's Stevan Harnad. He would like to see UK research made "accessible and assessable continuously online" rather than in a four-yearly process, as happens now. He argues that research in every discipline can continue to be refereed, but can be made freely accessible to all academics if they archive their own refereed research online, bypassing the access tolls charged by research publications. He says software can also determine research impact, that is, how much other researchers cite research and build on it... Harnad adds that the software to do this is available. All it needs is for the RAE to encourage the process "by mandating that all UK universities self archive all their annual refereed research in their own e-print archives". The benefits, he says, include "a far more effective and sensitive measure of research productivity and impact at far less cost" to both universities and the RAE and a strengthening of the uptake and impact of UK research by increasing its accessibility. "The UK is uniquely placed to move ahead with this and lead the world," Harnad says, "because the RAE is already in place." The public consultation on the future of the RAE closed last week. The review panel is assessing the contributions and will report shortly. David Clark: "The time involved in the process is mind-boggling. Universities set up committees between each RAE to test scenarios, model possible outcomes and consider reorganisations to maximise potential income from the next exercise. The preparation of submissions dominates universities in the run-up to the RAE. Yet the outcome is so strongly correlated with research income from external funders that the grading could be achieved at the press of a button." ------------------- Prior articles on this topic (2001) Harnad, S. (2001) "Research access, impact and assessment." Times Higher Education Supplement 1487: p. 16. http://cogprints.soton.ac.uk/documents/disk0/00/00/16/83/ Lawrence, S. (2001b) Free online availability substantially increases a paper's impact. Nature Web Debates. http://www.nature.com/nature/debates/e-access/Articles/lawrence.html