Panels of overseas scientists will for the first time help to assess the quality of Britain's best university research, according to Britain's higher-education funding councils. The move is one of several changes to Britain's Research Assessment Exercise (RAE), a regular initiative to assess the quality of university research. The next RAE will begin in April 2001. "Science is an international activity," says Bahram Bekhradnia, director of policy at the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE). Funding councils, he adds, will now have the chance to calibrate Britain's research on an international scale. Each of the RAE's 60 subject panels will choose a corresponding 'virtual' panel of scientists overseas. Members of the overseas panel will not meet physically, but will review all research considered by the UK panel to be worthy of the highest classification.
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