RAE results
RAE2008 results released in December 2008 confirm IBES as one of the top UK Institutes in Biological and Environmental Sciences Research consolidating our grade 5 positions from RAE2001.
Staff from the Institute of Biologial and Environmental Sciences were entered into two units of assessment in the RAE2008 exercise: UoA14 ? Biological Sciences and UoA16 Agriculture, Veterinary and food science. The grade spectra for our activity in both units indicated we had 55% of our activity in the combined 3* and 4* categories, with 15% of our activity in UoA14 and 20% of it in UoA16 being in the top 4* category. Very little of our activity was considered only national (10% in UoA14 and 5% in UoA16) and none of it was sub-national.
The detailed feedback from the committees include the following statements
UoA14 "there was evidence of world leading and internationally excellent outputs from each of the research groups in the submission..., "
UoA14 "...almost all the outputs were assessed as being of at least internationally recognised quality"
UoA16 "...world leading outputs were in Soil ecology and Environmental change groups"
In UK terms this profile places our activity 17th out of 52 for UoA14 and a spectacular 2nd out of 30 for UoA16, with only the University of Warwick doing better. These UK official rankings are based first on % of activity in the 4* category, and then if tied on activity at 3*, etc etc. Among the Scottish universities we are top in Agricultural Sciences and in Biological Sciences only Dundee and Edinburgh did better than us (with Edinburgh only 1 place above us in the official UK rankings based on % activity in the 4* category) see table.
Top 5 Scottish university rankings (UK position in [])
| UoA14- Biological Sciences | UoA16 Agriculture, Veterinary and Food? |
|---|---|
| 1. Dundee [5] | 1. Aberdeen [2] |
| 2. Edinburgh [16] | 2. Edinburgh [4] |
| 3. Aberdeen [17] | 3. Glasgow [9] |
| 4. Glasgow [18] | 4. Stirling [10] |
| 5. St Andrews [24] | 5. Heriot-Watt [17] |