The Long Road from RAE 2003 to REF post-2014

April 2003: "Being the only country with a national research assessment exercise [1], the UK is today in a unique position to make a small change that will confer some large benefits. The Funding Councils should mandate that in order to be eligible for Research Assessment and funding, all UK research-active university staff must maintain (I) a standardised online RAE-CV, including all designated RAE performance indicators, chief among them being (II) the full text of every refereed research paper, publicly self-archived in the university's online Eprint Archive and linked to the CV for online harvesting, scientometric analysis and assessment. This will (i) give the UK Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) far richer, more sensitive and more predictive measures of research productivity and impact, for far less cost and effort (both to the RAE and to the universities preparing their RAE submissions), (ii) increase the uptake and impact of UK research output, by increasing its visibility, accessibility and usage, and (iii) set an example for the rest of the world that will almost certainly be emulated, in both respects: research assessment and research access." Cf: http://www.hefce.ac.uk/media/hefce/content/news/news/2013/open_access_letter.pdf