 In the Research Excellence Framework (REF), published on 18 December 2014, it was confirmed that Royal Holloway sits within the top 25 per cent of UK universities for 'world-leading' and 'internationally excellent' research.In the REF assessment, 81 per cent of Royal Holloway's research is rated as world-leading (4*) and internationally excellent (3*), which is an increase of over 20 per cent from RAE 2008, which is the last time an exercise on this scale was conducted.In addition, 30 per cent of Royal Holloway's research is rated as world-leading (4*), which is an increase of more than 50 per cent on 2008 when 19 per cent of Royal Holloway's research was ranked in this category.