Bibliographical distortions, distortive habits: Contextualizing Italian publications in the history of science

This bibliographical essay provides an account of Italian scholarship in the history of science. In explaining the historical reasons for the unique patterns of publication that have given Italian scholarship such a strong philosophical orientation, the article also discusses how the overlapping of several factors (the different scholarly traditions, the reform of the academic recruitment system launched in 2010, the obsessive use of metrics in research evaluation, the imposition of absurdly rigid disciplinary boundaries, and rampant clientelism and nepotism) has caused severe distortions in the way scholarly works are produced and valued in Italian academia.