A rejoinder to the comments of Benedetto et al. on the paper "Critical remarks on the Italian research assessment exercise VQR 2011-2014" (Journal of Informetrics, 11(2): 337-357)

The paper “Critical remarks on the Italian research assessment exercise VQR 2011–2014” (Franceschini & Maisano, 2017) nalyzed some vulnerabilities of the recently concluded Italian assessment exercise. Some apical (former and current) embers of ANVUR promptly commented on our criticisms through a letter to the editor (Benedetto, Checchi, Graziosi, & algarini, 2017). We believe that this letter, in spite of the rather standoffish and overconfident tone, is not very convincing. omments are sometimes detailed and sometimes evasive, and they concern issues sometimes relevant and sometimes not: nfortunately, the comments concerning irrelevant issues are generally detailed, while those concerning the relevant ones re generally evasive. In the following, we provide a rejoinder to the comments directed to our paper. We have chosen not to raise the tone or reate controversy, limiting ourselves to discussing some of the issues addressed by Benedetto et al. (2017) in a brief and traight-to-the-point manner.