  In this work we ask whether and to what extent applying a predictor of
publications' impact better than early citations, has an effect on the
assessment of research performance of individual scientists. Specifically, we
measure the total impact of Italian professors in the sciences and economics in
a period of time, valuing their publications first by early citations and then
by a weighted combination of early citations and impact factor of the hosting
journal. As expected, scores and ranks by the two indicators show a very strong
correlation, but there occur also significant shifts in many fields, mainly in
Economics and statistics, and Mathematics and computer science. The higher the
share of uncited professors in a field and the shorter the citation time
window, the more recommendable the recourse to the above combination.
