The Italian experience demonstrates how national peer-review research evaluation activities in the hard sciences

Abstract

Bibliometrics has been shown to be more effective than peer review in national research 
evaluation activities, especially in the hard sciences. In this work, we focus on Italy and use the 
bibliometrics-based university performance rankings list from 2001-2003 as a comparison. We 
evaluate the first nationwide assessment exercise based only on peer review and contrast it to 
other free rankings lists compiled using factors only tangentially related to performance or 
publicly accessible online. The findings demonstrate that the Italian review of research institutes 
might have been avoided entirely in the hard sciences.