Room temperature photoluminescence (PL) properties of heavily-doped ZnO:Al thin films (with carrier concentration n in the range of 5-20 x 10(20) cm(-3)) prepared by pulsed laser deposition have been investigated. Despite their high carrier concentration, the films exhibited strong room temperature near-band-edge bound excitons at similar to 3.34 eV and an unusual peak at similar to 3.16 eV, and negligible deep-level emission even for the films deposited at a temperature as low as 25 degrees C. The radiative efficiency of the films increased with growth temperature as a result of increased n and improved crystallinity. A large blue shift of optical band gap was observed, which is consistent with the n-dependent Burstein-Moss and band gap-renormalization effects. Comparison of the results of the PL and optical measurements revealed a large Stokes shift that increased with increase in n. It has been explained by a model based on local potential fluctuations caused by randomly-distributed doping impurities. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.