  In recent years there has been an increasingly pressing need for the
evaluation of results from public sector research activity, particularly to
permit the efficient allocation of ever scarcer resources. Many of the studies
and evaluation exercises that have been conducted at the national and
international level emphasize the quality dimension of research output, while
neglecting that of productivity. This work is intended to test for the possible
existence of correlation between quantity and quality of scientific production
and determine whether the most productive researchers are also those that
achieve results that are qualitatively better than those of their colleagues.
The analysis proposed refers to the entire Italian university system and is
based on the observation of production in the hard sciences by above 26,000
researchers in the period 2001 to 2005. The results show that the output of
more productive researchers is superior in quality than that of less productive
researchers. The relation between productivity and quality results as largely
insensitive to the types of indicators or the test methods applied and also
seems to differ little among the various disciplines examined.
