if you ask me

´A focus on citations could discourage researchers from taking risks in new areas, as there wouldn´t be a community of researchers to cite their work´ Bob Cervi, manufacturing editor Nick Dusic, director, Campaign for Science & Engineering 28 Engineering & A measure of success How should you measure the quality of research being carried out by a nation´s universities? This question has vexed the UK since the inception of the Research Assessment Exercise in the 1980s. The RAE approach has been to use subject-specific expert panels to assess the quality of research in each university. Universities that were judged to perform world-class research received a larger chunk of funding to support their development.