Abstract

Folke Snickars, Björn Marklund, Tom Letcher
KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden
Evidence Ltd, UK

International research assessment revisited - A comparison between the research performance of KTH and selected UK universities

The paper addresses the issue of international research assessment. It does so by making a comparison between the performance of KTH and a selection of UK universities. The comparison is mainly made with the help of so-called Evidence footprints. It comprises 2001 and2004 and involves some 15 subject areas of research. The study is primarily a methodological analysis aimed at testing the comparability of Swedish and UK data on research performance. The results show that the some characteristic data on the two university systems are difficult to compare, for instance, those which refer to the structure of appointments. Other data can be more easily compared as, for instance, funding data and data on degree production. The most easily transferable data relate to publishing and citation. The comparison reveals that KTH would match the performance of British universities in most engineering fields.