Research

Research

• Vision & Strategy
• The Wisdom Agenda
• Excellence
  • Academic & Research Staff
  • Research Assessment
  • Research Funding
  • Nobel Laureates & Scholarship
  • UCL Provost's Venture Research Fellowship
• UCL Grand Challenges
• UCL Research Frontiers
• Impact
• Strategic Partnerships
• UCL Research & Parliament
• Access UCL Expertise
• Professor David Price, UCL Vice-Provost (Research)

Research Assessment

Independent assessment ranks UCL's research among the best in the world.

Medicine, architecture, laws, economics, computer science and philosophy are among the academic disciplines at UCL to have achieved outstanding results in the Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) 2008, with UCL’s total number of full-time equivalent staff rated of world-leading quality third overall in the UK after Oxford and Cambridge.

The RAE assesses the research strength of UK universities, and informs the distribution of public funds to the sector by the nation’s higher education funding bodies. UCL submitted more than 1,800 staff in 49 of the 67 Units of Assessment. In In 43 of our submissions, at least 50% of UCL's quality profile was either 4* (‘of world-leading quality’), or 3* (‘internationally excellent’). The next such exercise will be the Research Excellence Framework 2014.

The Thomson Scientific Citation Index – which catalogues journal articles and citations in the sciences, social sciences, and arts and humanities – shows that UCL is the second most-highly cited European university and 15th in the world. It is also the UK university most-cited by health researchers.