Constructions of Excellence and its Relationship with Research Culture in Research-intensive UK University Strategies

Abstract ‘Excellence’ is part of a routine academic vocabulary. Alongside informal usage, ‘excellence’ features in assessment criteria and lends its name to national research assessment exercises. The term has received criticism for being ill-defined and promoting hypercompetition. A key concern is that expectations of excellence promote practices detrimental to those involved in research, to research quality, and to its societal contributions. Other perspectives hold on to excellence as a non-negotiable value with some advocating for redefinition. This study explores research-intensive universities’ constructions of excellence in their strategies and their positioning of excellence in relation to research culture. Using a discursive approach to document analysis, we seek to better understand how the label is used in practice and to identify potential for both congruence and conflict between excellence and research culture narratives in the context of ongoing research evaluation reform. Our findings suggest that excellence is used to signal prestige and conformity with sector-wide values but also that it is heavily connotated with competition and assumptions of objective ‘assessability’. Constructions of the relationships between excellence and research culture vary in their clarity and show a significant scope for tensions.