REF/RAE History

The University found collecting and providing the information required for the RAE 2001 very challenging. As a result the design and development of the University's Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) System began immediately after work for RAE2001 was completed. The system was initially created as a prototype to show an integrated research information system could be successfully developed. In September 2004, following a request from the Medical School to provide a system to record their initial RAE2008 decisions, development of the system began in earnest. Because this phase of the project was prior to the publication of the HEFCE 'Guidance on Submissions' document, the system was developed using RAE2001 rules. However, once the RAE2008 rules were published the 2001 rules were progressively replaced and the system developed to run using the RAE2008 rules.

It was very straightforward to subsequently develop the system to support the REF pilot requirements.

Design

Much of the data required by the RAE/REF is stored in the University's central computer systems (Staff, Student, Publications and Research Accounting Systems). However, most of the data contained in such systems is un-related to the RAE/REF. The data sets are also extremely large and, in many cases, complex. An early design decision in the project was to bring together all research-related data into a coherent whole in a single location, which would be the Data Warehouse (DW).

It was decided to base the RAE system on the Data Warehouse, rather than on the individual systems which feed into it. The system enforces all RAE rules in a single location, rather apportioning them across multiple corporate systems. A slightly unusual feature was the inclusion of a separate updatable section which was added to the Data Warehouse in order to allow the user to make RAE selection decisions (i.e. the selection of which publications to submit to the RAE).

In addition, there are certain categories of data which were required for the RAE (and by extension probably the REF), but which are missing from source systems, and hence from the Data Warehouse. An example of such data is the supervision record of Research Associates (the University's Alta HR Staff System does not record such data). The RAE/REF System provides a mechanism for entering such missing data.

The Publications Database can hold any type of publication (book, book chapter, newspaper article, conference paper etc). The RAE/REF System is able to map each category to its nearest RAE category and determine whether it should be included in the REF/RAE.