Performance of British universities

British universities have had a long term leadership role in the development of psychology and still remain influential. In a recent benchmarking review (commissioned jointly by the British Psychological Society, the Experimental Psychology Society, the Association of Heads of Psychology Departments, and the Economic and Social Research Council in consultation with the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council, the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, and the Medical Research Council) the panel concluded. The Panel was strongly and unanimously of the view that, overall, the quality of UK research in psychology was internationally bettered only by psychology research from the USA, and that in a substantial number of research areas UK psychology research is unsurpassed in the world. The same view of UK psychology was shared by the senior psychology researchers interviewed by the Panel. It was also the view of UK psychology that was reached in the 2008 Research Assessment Exercise (RAE). And it was also the view expressed in Document D10’s Overview of Departmental Submissions.

Impact by country
Table 1: Papers, share of world papers and relative impact by country and subject (2000-2009)

Source: Evidence, Reuters Thomson (2010), Bibliometric data for the ESRC benchmarking review of psychology, Table 1 Note: Over half of psychology papers from the Thomson Reuters database were classified as neuroscience or psychiatry papers – subject areas which, while having a significant psychology component, also cover fields which do not relate to psychology. This table reflects Reuters Thomson report providing data for psychology research papers as a whole.

League tables
British universities are rated in a number of publically available league tables