The evaluation of government-financed research has become increasingly important in the last few decades in terms of increasing the quality of, and payoff from, the research that is done, reducing the cost of doing it, and lending public credibility to the manner in which research is funded. But there are very large differences throughout the…

This article examines how the UK Research Assessment Exercise (RAE), along with the development of performance indicators, fits into the production of research within a changing policy context. The historical evolution of the RAE from 1985-2001 is considered, before looking specifically at how research output (in the form of journal publications)…