As an integral part of the National Research Fund’s (NRF) goal of building a globally competitive science system in South Africa, the NRF rating system benchmarks the quality of South African researchers against the rest of the world. The rating process considers an individual researcher’s recent research outputs and impact as perceived by international peer reviewers. The rating system encourages researchers to publish high quality outputs in high impact journals or outlets. Ideally, rated researchers as supervisors are expected to impart cutting-edge research skills to the next generation of researchers (mostly postgraduate students).
NRF ratings are based predominantly on the quality and impact of research outputs over the past eight years, as evaluated by local and international peers. The rating system identifies researchers who are leaders in their fields and recognises the production of high quality research outputs.