Benchmarking research development in nursing: Curran's competitive advantage as a framework for excellence:

This paper offers a developmental benchmark against which to assess nursing research achievements and excellence. Internationally, the academy of nursing, like other disciplines, has able people fully capable of delivering high- quality research. This raises the question of why, during systematic, peer-review research assessment exercises nursing appears at the bottom of the academic units assessed both in the UK RAE (Research Assessment Exercise, 1992, 1996, 2001) and the New Zealand PBRF (Performance Based Research Fund, 2003). To examine this issue, after tracing the background of the international drive for research excellence and the UK's Research Assessment Exercise (RAE), Curran's analysis of competitive advantage in higher education is introduced as a means of analysing nursing's entry into higher education and the RAE. Together with data comparing the development of nursing with other disciplines, analysis suggests that UK nursing's performance in RAEs was as a new, hard-working, emerging, applied discipline which demonstrated a predictable research trajectory with strong trends of growth in quality and quantity. Recognising that research assessment is both a politically driven, socially constructed competition for scarce resources, and an analysis of the discipline, the conclusion argues that excellence and integrity should form the foundation of a disciplinary identity which incorporates the diversity of the subject. It also notes that without secure research income streams the growth in critical mass of the 'knowledge community' and nursing's capacity to contribute to health improvement will remain vulnerable despite strong positive trends.