Thirty Years of Legal Research: An Empirical Analysis of Outputs Submitted to RAE and REF (1990‐2021)

The external assessment of the research activities of universities in the United Kingdom began in 1986. In 1992, for the first time, the Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) required institutions to submit books, articles and other ‘outputs’ for peer assessment and ultimately ranking. This exercise was followed by others in 1996, 2001 and 2008, and then by a revised approach, the Research Evaluation Framework (REF), in 2014 and 2021. We have conducted a long‐term longitudinal study of the ‘outputs’ submitted across these exercises for review by the law panels. By analysing these 30,028 outputs, and by using various methods of ranking journals and publishers, we are able to provide insights into the beliefs and prejudices of institutions and individual researchers regarding the publication of legal research over a 30‐year period.