18 December 2014
In the REF2014 Research Excellence Framework the Lancaster Physics Department was ranked 2nd in the UK for the amount of its research output judged to be of internationally leading (4 star) quality. Indeed, 28% of our publications submitted for assessment were deemed to belong in the top bracket.
The Department is very proud that such a large fraction of its publications are of the highest ‘internationally leading’ quality, as this clearly demonstrates the world class quality of our research. In the preceding Research Assessment Exercise (RAE2008) only 20% of our published outputs were judged to be of 4 star quality.
Since 2008 the number of academic staff in Physics has grown very significantly as we were able to capitalise on our previous RAE successes, attract substantial new investment both internally and externally, broaden our research portfolio and enhance the amount of our research that is of world leading quality. We included 32% more staff in REF2014 than in RAE2008.