  It is several years since national research evaluation systems around the
globe started making use of quantitative indicators to measure the performance
of researchers. Nevertheless, the effects on these systems on the behavior of
the evaluated researchers are still largely unknown. We attempt to shed light
on this topic by investigating how Italian researchers reacted to the
introduction in 2011 of national regulations in which key passages of
professional careers are governed by bibliometric indicators. A new inwardness
measure, able to gauge the degree of scientific self-referentiality of a
country, is defined as the proportion of citations coming from the country
itself compared to the total number of citations gathered by the country.
Compared to the trends of the other G10 countries in the period 2000-2016,
Italy's inwardness shows a net increase after the introduction of the new
evaluation rules. Indeed, globally and also for a large majority of the
research fields, Italy became the European country with the highest inwardness.
Possible explanations are proposed and discussed, concluding that the observed
trends are strongly suggestive of a generalized strategic use of citations,
both in the form of author self-citations and of citation clubs. We argue that
the Italian case offers crucial insights on the constitutive effects of
evaluation systems. As such, it could become a paradigmatic case in the debate
about the use of indicators in science-policy contexts.
