London:&nbsp;Oxford University has nudged past&nbsp;its traditional rival Cambridge by being named Britain's best&nbsp;research university.
The 2014 Research Excellence Framework (REF), to be&nbsp;released here on Friday, is used as a basis for government&nbsp;funding allocation and has had an Oxbridge stronghold over the&nbsp;years.
Oxford University's vice-chancellor Andrew Hamilton said&nbsp;he was delighted by the preview of the results.
"Research is an intensely competitive activity and we are&nbsp;looking at and responding to worldwide competition in the&nbsp;world of research, the recruitment of leading academics and&nbsp;outstanding students, so there will be no resting on laurels,"&nbsp;Hamilton said.
This year, however, some of London's leading universities&nbsp;are posing a strong challenge to Oxbridge domination with&nbsp;University College London (UCL) and London School of Economics&nbsp;(LSE) edging up the scales.
In fact, UCL beat Cambridge to take second position.&nbsp;
According to an analysis of the study done by 'Research&nbsp;Fortnight', Oxford University is set to take the largest share&nbsp;of allocated university funding, after almost half of the&nbsp;research produced by its 2,400 academic staff was given the&nbsp;top four-star rating by panels of judges and experts in each&nbsp;subject, while the output of University College London's 2,600&nbsp;staff placed it above Cambridge's 2,100.
"London looks unstoppable. It has over 100,000 square&nbsp;metres of new research facilities coming online shortly and that's just the start. It could now eclipse Oxbridge,"&nbsp;said William Cullerne Bown of the 'Research Fortnight'&nbsp;publication. Among the major London institutions, Imperial College in
London also scored high with 90 per cent of its research&nbsp;activities classed as world-leading or internationally&nbsp;excellent.
On the other end of the scale, universities in the north&nbsp;of England took a hammering over the quality of their&nbsp;research, and academics there now face the prospect of being&nbsp;made redundant after several institutions slipped down the&nbsp;rankings used to allocate funding.
"The biggest losers are Manchester, Liverpool, Sheffield,&nbsp;Birmingham and Leeds. The North is taking a hammering.&nbsp;Oxbridge wins. London wins bigger. Almost everyone else in&nbsp;England loses," Bown added.
UK universities minister Greg Clark said: "Britain's&nbsp;outstanding reputation in research is founded on excellence. A&nbsp;rigorous and unflinching review by fellow experts assures that&nbsp;excellence, this is why the REF is such a crucial driver of&nbsp;quality."
The REF measured the quality of research from more than&nbsp;52,000 academics in 154 universities.

Oxford University has nudged past&nbsp;its traditional rival Cambridge by being named Britain's best&nbsp;research university

Oxford overtakes Cambridge as UK's best research university

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Oxford overtakes Cambridge as UK's best research university

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