Political interference in the Polish Journal Ranking. Why rankings must be in the hands of researchers

Abstract

The direct motivation for this article is the publication of two updates of the Polish Journal Rankings on 9 and 18 February 2021, which were prepared by the Minister of Education and Science and bypassed the Research Evaluation Commission. This article aims to characterize the changes made by the minister in relation to the draft ranking prepared by the commission. For providing a complete picture of the changes, I describe the main principles for building the ranking according to the new model implemented in 2018. Then, I characterize the minister's changes in terms of added journals and changing the points assigned to the journals. The analysis is provided through the lens of the universities publishing these journals and the disciplines assigned to the journals. The article concludes by identifying four main recommendations that should be implemented to restore the usefulness of the ranking as an instrument of science policy.