** Apologies for Cross-Posting **

Don't say we didn't tell you so! The wasteful, time-consuming RAE will
be replaced by metrics, chief among them citation impact, which already
correlated with and predicted the RAE outcome anyway, without being
explicitly counted. Now it can be explicitly counted (along with other
powerful new metrics) and all the rest of the ritualistic time-wasting
can be abandoned, without ceremony. This is a great boost for
institutional self-archiving in OA Institutional Repositories, not only
as the obvious, optimal means of submission, but as the means of
maximising research impact:  http://irra.eprints.org/software/bronze/
(I hope RCUK is listening!):

    "Research exercise to be scrapped"
     Donald MacLeod, Guardian Wednesday March 22, 2006
     http://education.guardian.co.uk/RAE/story/0,,1737082,00.html

Cf: Harnad, S. (2001) Why I think that research access, impact and assessment
    are linked. Times Higher Education Supplement 1487: p. 16.
    http://www.thes.co.uk/search/story.aspx?story_id=74889
    http://cogprints.org/1683/

    Harnad, S. (2003) Why I believe that all UK research output
    should be online.
    Times Higher Education Supplement. Friday, June 6 2003.
    http://www.thes.co.uk/search/story.aspx?story_id=92599
    http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/7728/

    Harnad, S., Carr, L., Brody, T. & Oppenheim, C. (2003) Mandated
    online RAE CVs Linked to University Eprint Archives: Improving
    the UK Research Assessment Exercise whilst making it cheaper and
    easier. Ariadne.
    http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue35/harnad/