Welcome to You are the REF!
Worried about proposals by the Higher Education Funding Council for England to replace the RAE with a Research Excellence Framework? Evidence and ResearchResearch have got together to create an online tool based on HEFCE's proposed approach to help you explore what metrics might mean for your department. You are the REF also lets you have some fun in working out where you might be standing after RAE 2008.

Metrics metrics metrics
Everyone's talking about metrics, but how would they work in reality? You are the REF lets you get a feel for the implications. The new REF will be used to allocate research funds for universities and colleges from 2010 and HEFCE has said that the quality metrics it has in mind are research income, citations and PhDs. But how would these be measured, and which would be most important? There's no definitive answer yet. But You are the REF let's you play with the options and find out whether your department ends up top or bottom of the league.

Play the game
With You are the REF, you can choose what weighting to put on each factor. Are some funding sources more important than others? What is the value of more highly-cited papers? You choose what weight to put on each factor - and then you can see what happens to the rankings. To get started, just click the big white arrow, right.

Try this out as many times as you want and bookmark your different scenarios. Come back, revise your scenarios and bookmark them again. Email them to your colleagues. If you've got questions or want to discuss the issues raised, please visit the blog of Evidence's Jonathan Adams here

Watch out
You are the REF draws on the vast ISI citations database and Evidence's expert insight. And we've limited it to just the 17 disciplines where realistic answers are currently possible. So the results are as good as they can be for now. But please note: this is not a formal evaluation. HEFCE hasn't signed up to this. The testing and evaluation is what you are going to do now. Caution should be exercised in predicting any research metrics in the home. Indicators can go down as well as up...

About us
Evidence Ltd is a Leeds-based consultancy specialising in research performance analysis and interpretation. We are the publishers of the UK Higher Education Research Yearbook, carry out research performance profiling for DIUS, DfES and HEFCE, and produce research reports and products for clients ranging from individual Higher Education Institutions to overseas governments. To contact us, visit our website here.

ResearchResearch is the publisher of Research Fortnight, the bible of Britain's research community since 1994. Research Fortnight is relied upon by policymakers and researchers alike to deliver accurate news and valuable analysis on key issues. If you're wondering about what the REF will mean for your department or institution, then you should consider subscribing to Research Fortnight. You can download a sample issue here.

(Meanwhile, if you want to find out more about the art of refereeing, visit http://www.philosophyfootball.com/view_item.php?pid=351)

This web site Copyright and Database Right 2008 Research Research Limited and Evidence Limited, UK. Citations data copyright Thomson Reuters Inc.