Public Service Agreements (Hansard, 16 January 2002)

§ Ms Hewitt

The most recent measurements of the international ranking of the Science and Engineering Base (SEB) in terms of quality, relevance and cost-effectiveness indicate that the UK continues to maintain its position relative to other G7 nations. The details are as followsThe quality of the science and engineering base is measured by the UK's world ranking in terms of citations of published papers. Over the period 1981–2000 the UK received a 9.1 per cent. share of the citations in the international Science Citation Index, second only to the US. The UK was second in 'citation shares' for 15 out of 20 scientific fields with the lowest placing being fifth. One measure of relevance is the UK's world ranking in terms of the proportion of university research funding from non-governmental sources. For the latest year for which data are available (1997), the UK was again ranked first among the G7 countries. Cost-effectiveness is measured by the UK's world ranking in terms of the number of papers published per £1 million of public expenditure on science. In 1990, 1993, 1996 and 1999, the UK was the leading country in the G7. For the latest year (2000) the UK was again ranked first.

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These measures were put in place at the time of the Comprehensive Spending Review and were continued for the period of the 2000 Spending Review (2001–02 to 2003–04).

While the public service agreement targets described here provide a valuable indication of the strength of the UK science base relative to our competitors, other indications are also available. The results of the latest Research Assessment Exercise were published on 14 December and show that, since 1996 when the last study was carried out, many university research groups have significantly improved their performance.