The research assessment exercise has resulted in substantial reductions in funding to some medical schools and has led to a loss of status for teaching compared with research

The exercise has undervalued clinical and health services research and disadvantaged highly specialised and multidisciplinary research

It also promotes a short term approach to research and is expensive to operate

Proposed changes for the exercise in 2001 should help address these problems, but the fundamental review of research policy and funding by the funding councils provides an opportunity for innovative change

In 1999-2000 the Higher Education Funding Council for England will distribute over 855m [pounds sterling] for research, virtually all of it according to the quality and amount of research done. Quality is assessed through a periodic research assessment exercise. Research is funded selectively so that universities and colleges with high quality research departments get a larger share of the money. The first research assessment exercise to cover the entire higher education sector was undertaken in 1992, the last one was in 1996, and the next will take place in 2001. The research community now has an opportunity to influence the way in which quality of research is assessed after the exercise in 2001 because, from now until autumn 2000, the funding councils for England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland are undertaking a fundamental review of research policy and funding.

Each higher education institution is allocated a block grant that includes quality related research funding. This quality related funding provides money for the infrastructure of research–helping to cover the costs of the salaries of permanent academic staff, premises, and central computing–while research charities and funding councils provide for direct project costs and contribute to indirect project costs. The quality related research funding is thus the core funding for the university research base and is allocated by the funding councils according to the quality rating of each unit of assessment.

The research assessment exercise

For each clinical unit of assessment, the parent university makes a submission which is given a quality rating after being judged against standards of national and international research excellence. The quality of research submitted for each unit is assessed by a panel of practising researchers in the subject and is based on the quality of publications, numbers of research assistants and research studentships, and income from research grants, particularly peer reviewed funding (such as that from the Medical Research Council and the Association of Medical Research Charities). The panel also seeks evidence of the vitality of the department and its prospects for continuing development. Quality is rated on a seven point scale, from 1 at the bottom through 2, 3a, 3b, 4, and 5 to 5* at the top. A rating of 1 is defined as research quality that equates to attainable levels of national excellence in none or virtually none of the sub-areas of activity, whereas 5* is defined as research quality that equates to attainable levels of international excellence in most sub-areas of activity and attainable levels of national excellence in all others.

Within the funding system as a whole weightings are given to each broad area of research so that, for example, laboratory and clinical subjects receive more funding than the humanities. The total funding for a given subject is calculated by multiplying the funding associated with the quality rating by the volume of research in that subject. Volume of research in each unit of assessment is measured according to five separate components–numbers of academic staff active in research, research assistants, research fellows, and postgraduate students and research income from charities. The number of academic staff active in research is the most important measure of volume and accounts for up to two thirds of the total. Quality ratings 1 and 2 attract no funding, whereas a rating of 5* attracts about four times as much funding as a rating of 3b for the same volume of research activity. Thus the funding of research is highly selective. In 1998-9, 75% of research funds from the Higher Education Funding Council for England went to just 26 of the more than 100 higher education institutions.

Effect of the research assessment exercise on medical research

The three clinical units of assessment (clinical laboratory sciences, community based clinical subjects, and hospital based clinical subjects) are the most important units for medical schools, but the quality of research in other units from the 69 subject areas (including clinical dentistry, nursing, subjects allied to medicine, preclinical subjects, biological sciences, and biochemistry) will also affect the allocation of quality related research funding to universities that have associated medical schools.

In a report of an independent task force on clinical academic careers,[2] only six medical schools (out of more than 20) had at least one unit of assessment with a score of 5 or 5*. The report divided medical schools and postgraduate institutions into four bands and commented that the ratings of the 19 medical schools in the lower two bands were very disappointing, yet it also pointed out that Sir Robert May, the government’s chief scientific advisor, had written to the task force emphasising that he regarded clinical medicine as one of Britain’s research strengths, both absolutely and relatively. However, it is impossible to be certain about the comparative performance of Britain in medical research because the measures used by May were not the same as those used in the research assessment exercise.