  The formulation of national research policies would benefit greatly from
reliable strategic analysis of the scientific infrastructure, aimed at
identifying the relevant strengths and weaknesses at field level. Bibliometric
methodologies thus far proposed in the literature are not completely
satisfactory. This work proposes a novel "output-to-input-oriented" approach,
which permits identification of research strengths and weaknesses on the basis
of the ratios of top scientists and highly cited articles to research
expenditures in each field. The proposed approach is applied to the Italian
academic system. 2012-2016 scientific publications are analyzed, in the 218
research fields where bibliometric assessment is appropriate.
