Performance

The principal function of staff at the Armagh Observatory is to advance knowledge and understanding of astronomy and related sciences by pursuing high-quality scientific research and attracting visitors and research assistants (at postgraduate and postdoctoral levels), as well as external grant income, to the City of Armagh. The Observatory's programme of public understanding of science, outreach and student training also makes a significant contribution to government strategies to raise interest in science and technology throughout the community, and especially amongst young people. These activities help to counter negative stereotypes about science and technology, and contribute to greater scientific literacy amongst the general population.

In these ways, the work of the Armagh Observatory promotes a strong, positive image of Northern Ireland and of Armagh City and District on the world stage, and makes a distinctive contribution to external impressions of the region. The work of the Observatory also attracts a wide range of visitors to Armagh, in particular to the Armagh Astropark, the main Observatory building, its telescopes and surrounding landscaped grounds, and the wealth of resources accessible from its principal astronomical and meteorological web-sites (star.arm.ac.uk and climate.arm.ac.uk).

As proxy indicators of performance in each of the Observatory's principal areas of activity (research, public understanding of science, outreach, student training, and heritage) records are maintained of (A) External Grant Income (per financial year); (B) the number of Refereed Journal Publications (per calendar year); (C) the number of Identified Media Citations (per calendar year); and (D) the number of Distinct e-Visitors (DEVs) to its web-sites (per calendar year). Although other data are recorded for internal management and statistical purposes (e.g. numbers of presentations, seminars and invited talks, grants and telescope time etc.), a detailed annual analysis of such indicators is less informative than a thorough periodic assessment of the Observatory's research performance in the round, making allowance for the available resources and, for example, the Observatory's relatively small size compared to many of the university departments and research institutes with which the Observatory is often compared. The Observatory has participated in the Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) since 1992, and during this period has maintained a Quality Research (QR) rating of Grade 4. In the 2001 RAE this grade corresponded to: ``Quality that equates to attainable levels of national excellence in virtually all of the research activity submitted, showing some evidence of international excellence.''

The trends of the Observatory's principal performance indicators, provided in Table 1, are repeated below for convenience and shown graphically in Figure 2. Note that in this table all items refer to calendar year, with the exception of financial matters (e.g. external grant income for 2003 refers to the financial year 2003/2004 and so on).

Table 2: The yearly trend of various performance indicators versus calendar year, including the total DCAL grant income received in respect of the corresponding financial year, including slippage funding, and the total announced budget for 2004/2005, including the recently announced £20,000 for DDA work. The number of Distinct e-Visitors for 2003 has been estimated from recorded information relating only to the period June-December 2003 for the Observatory's principal web-site, owing to loss of earlier data during the year. Targets for calendar year 2004 (financial year 2004/2005) are expressed in round figures.


	External	Refereed	Identified	Distinct		Total DCAL
Calendar Year	Grant Income	Journal	Media	e-Visitors	RAE Grade	Grant Income
	(£000s)	Publications	Citations	(DEVs)		(£000s)

1992			-		4	457.3
1993	35	13	-			445.0
1994	58	22	11			425.6
1995	172	19	14			468.5
1996	264	45	45		4	480.0
1997	275	42	108	66,000		473.2
1998	195	43	147	80,000		443.0
1999	293	32	233	134,000		458.5
2000	212	31	233	174,000		538.5
2001	221	32	302	318,000	4	713.5
2002	306	33	267	354,000		733.5
2003	270	34	225	470,000		781.5
2004 Targets:	250	32	200	500,000		686.5

Figure 2: Histograms showing various performance indicators for the Armagh Observatory during the past decade. Reading clockwise from top-left, the Figure shows respectively the variation of External Grant Income (£000s) per financial year, and the number of Refereed Journal Publications, the number of Identified Media Citations, and the number of Distinct e-Visitors, all per calendar year. The financial year runs from 1 April to 31 March, so external grant income for 2003 corresponds to the period 1 April 2003 to 31 March 2004 and so on. Dotted lines indicate previous Business Plan targets.

So far as the particular indicators are concerned, the Observatory's total non-DCAL income (£284,000) slightly exceeds the value for external grant income alone (£270,000); the number of refereed journal publications is a lower limit to the total number of refereed papers, which is a subset of the Observatory's entire research output; the number of identified media citations is a lower limit to the actual number of mentions of the Observatory or its staff in various mass-media; and the number of Distinct e-Visitors (DEVs) is the number of distinct hosts served by the Observatory's web-site. This too is a lower limit, owing to caching by big servers and sharing or repeat visits from the same IP number. (For comparison, the number of `hits' on the Observatory's web-sites, defined as the number of successful page requests, was approximately 8 million during calendar year 2003.)

Total external grant income during 2003/2004, namely £270,000, was above the target figure of £250,000 set in April 2003, and was again significantly boosted by income associated with the largely HLF-funded telescope domes and historic telescopes restoration project. As a group, the five Research Astronomers at Armagh are together bringing into the Observatory more external funding in terms of non-DCAL grant income than their gross DCAL-funded salary costs, a remarkable achievement. This statistic alone demonstrates the potential for growth with the presence of additional research staff. The target for external grant income for 2004/2005 has again been set at £250,000, the same as the previous year, although with research grants still being extremely hard to obtain this represents an extremely tough target to reach.

The number of refereed journal publications in 2003 has been maintained at the levels of recent years, the slight increase in each of the past several years being an encouraging but possibly not statistically significant result. Similarly, the number of identified media citations has remained at a high level, substantially above the target of 200 per year, and the number of DEVs continues to show a healthy year-on-year increase. This demonstrates a satisfactory growth in the profile and external impact of the Armagh Observatory, despite the slight decline in the total number of research-active staff.

In summary, the table of performance measures (Table 2 and Figure 2) shows that the Observatory has maintained a high level of research activity during the reporting period, and has maintained an exceptionally high public profile. For such a small research group, the frequency with which members of staff appear in or are quoted in newspapers and other media is probably second to none, and during each of the past five years has exposed reports of astronomy at Armagh to tens of millions of people world-wide.