All eight University Grants Committee-funded higher education institutions have made great strides in their research performance, according to results of the Research Assessment Exercise 2006.

More than 76% of the eligible academic staff in the institutions' 13 subject areas had submitted research output items for assessment and the relevant subject panels judged them to have generally reached or surpassed the quality standard.

Commenting on the results, University Grants Committee Chairman Dr Alice Lam said she is pleased to learn all UGC-funded institutions have made remarkable improvements to achieve international excellence in research. 

"Many of our colleagues are internationally known top-notch researchers and this reflects the effort of our institutions in excelling in research over the years."

18,700 items assessed

For the current exercise, there were altogether 13 assessment panels involving 208 panel members, 65 of which were from Australia, Canada, Chinese Mainland, France, Ireland, Norway, Singapore, Taiwan, the UK and the US. The panels assessed about 18,700 research output items from about 3,500 academic staff.

Dr Lam said the results will be factored into the 'Research' portion of the institutions' recurrent grants.

The committee will allocate about $11 billion to institutions for research during the 2005-08 triennium. This includes Research Grants Council-administered research grants and part of the recurrent grants provided by the committee to the institutions supporting research activities.