REF 2014 results are now out (effective 00:01, 18 December 2014), six years to the day since the last round.
There are many, many ways to calculate rankings from the data – GPA, “Gold Medals” and Market Share for example – but arguably one of the more convincing ones is Research Power. Calculations undertaken by colleagues here at the University of Nottingham show an interesting picture:
Research Power
|
Rank |
Institute |
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|
1 |
University College London |
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|
2 |
University of Oxford |
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|
3 |
University of Cambridge |
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|
4 |
University of Edinburgh |
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|
5 |
University of Manchester |
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|
6 |
King’s (College) London |
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|
7 |
Imperial College London |
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|
8 |
University of Nottingham |
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|
9 |
University of Bristol |
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|
10 |
University of Leeds |
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|
11 |
University of Southampton |
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|
12 |
University of Glasgow |
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|
13 |
University of Sheffield |
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|
14 |
University of Birmingham |
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|
15 |
University of Warwick |
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|
16 |
Newcastle University |
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|
17 |
Cardiff University |
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|
18 |
Queen’s University Belfast |
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|
19 |
University of Durham |
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|
20 |
University of Liverpool |
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|
21 |
University of Exeter |
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|
22 |
Queen Mary University of London |
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|
23 |
University of York |
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|
24 |
London School of Economics and Political Science |
Research Fortnight Research Power Rankings 2014
Research Fortnight has a similar list with pretty much the same positions but with some interesting swaps of places, especially at the top:
| Research Fortnight 2014 Power Rank | 2008 Rank | Institution |
| 1 | 1 | Oxford |
| 2 | 3 | UCL |
| 3 | 2 | Cambridge |
| 4 | 5 | Edinburgh |
| 5 | 4 | Manchester |
| 6 | 6 | Imperial |
| 7 | 11 | KCL |
| 8 | 7 | Nottingham |
| 9 | 10 | Bristol |
| 10 | 8 | Leeds |
| 11 | 13 | Southampton |
| 12 | 9 | Sheffield |
| 13 | 14 | Glasgow |
| 14 | 15 | Warwick |
| 15 | 12 | Birmingham |
| 16 | 17 | Newcastle |
| 17 | 16 | Cardiff |
| 18 | 19 | Durham |
| 19 | 21 | Queen’s Belfast |
| 20 | 20 | Queen Mary, London |
| 21 | 25 | Exeter |
| 22 | 18 | Liverpool |
| 23 | 27 | LSE |
| 24 | 22 | York |
The headline from all of this is that the reason I have only included 24 spots in the table is because each of the first 24 places is taken by a Russell Group University. In some ways quite remarkable but probably not actually that surprising when you think about it given the nature of the institutions and historical patterns of resource allocation for research.
Other analysis can be found elsewhere here on Wonkhe.
“arguably one of the more convincing ones is Research Power”
The correlation between FTE entered and Research Power is .997. For all real world purposes they’re the same thing.
If you’re interested in how big a department is then by all means look at Research Power. But you’d be better off just looking at FTE: then you wouldn’t need to bother running a REF at all.