  In December 2003, seventeen years after the first UK research assessment
exercise, Italy started up its first-ever national research evaluation, with
the aim to evaluate, using the peer review method, the excellence of the
national research production. The evaluation involved 20 disciplinary areas,
102 research structures, 18,500 research products and 6,661 peer reviewers
(1,465 from abroad); it had a direct cost of 3.55 millions Euros and a time
length spanning over 18 months. The introduction of ratings based on ex post
quality of output and not on ex ante respect for parameters and compliance is
an important leap forward of the national research evaluation system toward
meritocracy. From the bibliometric perspective, the national assessment offered
the unprecedented opportunity to perform a large-scale comparison of peer
review and bibliometric indicators for an important share of the Italian
research production. The present investigation takes full advantage of this
opportunity to test whether peer review judgements and (article and journal)
bibliometric indicators are independent variables and, in the negative case, to
measure the sign and strength of the association. Outcomes allow us to advocate
the use of bibliometric evaluation, suitably integrated with expert review, for
the forthcoming national assessment exercises, with the goal of shifting from
the assessment of research excellence to the evaluation of average research
performance without significant increase of expenses.
