Publications and evaluation items: The distorted image of science in Poland

Abstract

The article discusses the consequences of the practice of double-counting publications in the Polish research evaluation system, i.e. in the Comprehensive Evaluation of Scientific Units that was conducted in 2013. Our study examines 139 top ranked journals indexed in the Web of Science™ Core Collection in which Polish scholars published in 2009-2012. We analyzed 1788 publications (both citable and non-citable items) and their corresponding “evaluation items” (zgłoszenia ewaluacyjne: a formal category within the Polish research evaluation system) in terms of the number of authors per paper. We found that 42.4% (N = 789) of these publications were submitted for evaluation and generated 1036 evaluation items. 759 of the analyzed publications (94.8%) were written by more than one author and thus generated multiple evaluation items (approximately 1.3 evaluation items per paper). Our findings show that this way of publication counting plays a major role in constructing the image of productivity of Polish scholars. The article concludes with a discussion of the consequences of double-counting and argues for a need to maintain a balance between all groups of sciences.