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Research League Table: is there a better way?
Author(s) -
Tomlin Richard
Publication year - 1998
Publication title -
higher education quarterly
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.976
H-Index - 42
eISSN - 1468-2273
pISSN - 0951-5224
DOI - 10.1111/1468-2273.00092
Subject(s) - league table , table (database) , league , computer science , compiler , operations research , database , mathematics , economics , programming language , physics , astronomy , classical economics
The results of the 1996 Research Assessment Exercise were presented in several places, notably in The Higher, in the form of a league table. The article discusses how this table was compiled and points to a number of fundamental problems in the way in which the data were handled. It goes on to discuss some more general issues in the calculation of league tables and shows the extreme sensitivity of the RAE data to certain arbitrary assumptions that have to be made. It concludes by urging caution on any who may be tempted to draw conclusions from such tables as well as on those who might compile such tables in the future.