RAE journals

Citation

Hoxley, M. (2009), "RAE journals", Structural Survey, Vol. 27 No. 5. https://doi.org/10.1108/ss.2009.11027eaa.001

RAE journals

Article Type: Editorial From: Structural Survey, Volume 27, Issue 5

Professor Will Hughes of the University of Reading has carried out an interesting analysis of the outputs submitted to Unit of Assessment 30 (Architecture and the Built Environment) of the 2008 UK Research Assessment Exercise (RAE). The RAE is the peer review mechanism by which the UK Government distributes research funding for the forthcoming few years and was the first in which “architecture” and the “built environment” have been assessed together. The disciplinary domains within the submissions were categorized as follows:

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  Architecture, Landscape, Theory and History – 35 per cent.

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  Construction Management, Property, Surveying and FM – 30 per cent.

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  Building Science, Environment and Engineering – 35 per cent.

Professor Hughes (2009) has undertaken an analysis of where these researchers chose to publish. The vast majority of journal titles that appear in the list of outputs appear only once. Table I, prepared by Will, shows those journals that contained more than ten papers submitted to UoA30.

Table 1

Many readers will know that Will Hughes is Editor of the journal at the head of the list and no-one will be surprised to see CM&E out on its own leading the way – given the number of issues per year, its very high reputation and the fact that it is a well established journal.

I was pleasantly surprised to see the relatively high ranking of Structural Survey in this list and believe that this is a good indication of the growing maturity of the building surveying research domain.

Papers in this issue

The above discussion seems somewhat out of place given that every paper in this issue comes from outside the UK! This issue has a truly international flavour as the papers have been submitted by researchers based in The Netherlands, Italy, Hong Kong, Portugal and Australia. What gives these papers an added international dimension is that the two Dutch-based researchers write about building control in Portugal and environmental assessment in Mexico. In addition the Australian-based researchers write about a case-study in Los Angeles.

The issues considered in these papers are those particularly topical at the present time – residential regeneration and adaptive reuse (Bullen and Love), environmental assessment of construction trends (Guerra Santin), the performance of apartment buildings (Yau et al.), just how small such dwellings can and should be (Oliveira Pedro) and the thermal behaviour of roofs (D’Orazio et al.). I hope that you enjoy reading about the results of their research from around the world.

Mike Hoxley