The quad of King's College Medical School Guys Campus RICHARD NAFTALINThe upcoming Research Excellence Framework (REF) facing British universities in 2014 is a major threat to physiology and other basic medical sciences. The primary focus of REF will be to assess research excellence of tenured university professors, as demonstrated by the quality of their research publications. This new system for assessing the quality of research in UK higher education will be undertaken by the country’s four major funding bodies and will be used from 2015–2016 to selectively allocate research funding.
Basic medical sciences and clinical science departments within the medical schools are in direct competition for financial and human resources and will be judged by the same panel of experts and the same criteria. To be included as an active research scientist in an elite university’s submission to REF requires three recently published papers in journals with high impact factors. The number of citations that each submitted paper attracts will also count but in elite institutions only papers published in journals with an impact factor of 5 or greater will be submitted for assessment by REF. Papers graded by REF as “outstanding” will earn their institution £100,000 (~$154,000); those rated merely “excellent” will be awarded £25,000 (~$38,500); anything less will be given no funding.
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