On the use of journal classification in social sciences and humanities: evidence from an Italian database

In social sciences and humanities, a two-tier journal classification is currently used in Italy in the context of the National Habilitation programme; peer review is also available for a large number of articles published in the same journals, in the framework of the last national evaluation exercise (VQR 2011–2014). We take advantage of these combined two rich datasets in order to check if journals classified as top class by scientific experts show higher impact and if articles published in those journals receive higher marks in peer-reviewed evaluation exercises with respect to other journals. Our main result is that ANVUR classification offers on average a reliable proxy for the quality of journals, as measured by journal indicators and by the assessments of independent experts evaluating individual articles published in those journals. While peer review is still to be considered as the main method for evaluation in Humanities and Social sciences, our analysis supports the view that journal classification can be a useful tool to support peer review even in SSH.