King’s crowned ‘world-leading’ as it smashes academic research league tables

KING’S has smashed the prestigious university rankings for academic research today, coming out 7th in the country for quality and 6th for ‘power’.

The university was confirmed as “world-leading” in a plethora of categories, and was crowned “the biggest winner” in the fiercely competitive tables.

The Research Excellence Framework (REF), which comes out once every five years, is used to divvy up the government’s £2 billion research fund.

Research done by Politics and International Studies staff was ranked 1st in the national power rankings, whereas Law achieved 1st place for the quality of research category.

KCL’s exceptional results will mean a substantial increase in research grants for the College.

Scores are generated by grading research output from 4* (world leading) to 1* (nationally recognised).

40.2% of King’s research submitted was graded 4* or world leading and 45% was graded 3* or internationally excellent.

As a result King’s leapt from 11th place in 2008 to 6th place in the power rankings, which rank according to both the quality and quantity of research.

King’s has also jumped from 22nd to 7th in the quality rankings.

Principal Ed Byrne said: “We are very proud of the achievements of our staff, many of whom are at the cutting-edge of their disciplines.”

According to Research Fortnight Magazine, King’s will gain an extra 0.82% of the government’s £1 billion research pot due to these results.

This equates to an extra £8 million in research grants annually.

King’s professor and Tory ex-minister David Willetts also weighed in: “King’s is joining Oxbridge in the global elite of great universities. The golden triangle looks even more golden.”

A previous version of this article stated that the government’s research pot was £2bn and that this equated to £16m of King’s research grants. We are happy to correct this.