Internationalization of Polish Journals in the Social Sciences and Humanities: Transformative Role of The Research Evaluation System

Abstract

This article discusses the transformations of Polish journals caused by the Polish Journal Ranking evaluation system. We focused on the internationalization of journals in the social sciences and humanities (N = 801), with the goal of investigating how science policy has transformed editorial practices at Polish journals. We used a mixed-method approach involving both one-way analysis of variance, two-way mixed design analysis of variance, and semi-structured interviews. Our findings showed that science policy has transformed editorial practices, but that there is no actual internationalization in Polish social sciences and humanities journals. Rather, there is only the ostensible internationalization that manifests in “gaming” the journal evaluation system. We found that the editors of Polish journals do not discuss the challenges of internationalization, and implement only those internationalization practices that are explicitly required in the system regulations. We conclude with recommendations for how to motivate the internationalization of journals and stem the corruption of parameters measuring internationalization.

Journal article publishing in the social sciences and humanities: A comparison of Web of Science coverage for five European countries

“…These observations raise a question: Does change in coverage correspond to researchers' efforts to reflect intradisciplinary changes and/or the push to submit (regional) journals for inclusion in WoS to increase the chances of receiving more money based on the funding mechanisms outlined in national PRFSs? Although from our own experience we know that both options can be valid for some disciplines, our present results (Figs [9][10][11] show that publishing in domestic journals (regardless of the percentage of domestic authors published in these journals) does not seem to influence increasing coverage. Empirical research is needed to answer this question more properly.…”

“…However, SSH researchers in the Czech Republic still commonly believe that publishing in WoS journals can be at times too challenging for several reasons; whether real or perceived, these reasons include research limited to topics of local relevance, language barriers, and lack of journals in the researchers' fields [9,10]. Some researchers in other CEE countries hold similar opinions [11,12]. The local versus international dilemma also obviously applies to journals' publishing strategies [13,14].…”

The case for an inclusive scholarly communication infrastructure for social sciences and humanities

“…This is a dangerous situation as it creates a clear conflict of interests for a company which both publishes journals and ranks their impact. Hence, the pressure for internationalisation, aptly described by Kulczycki & colleagues, (2019b) , has a clear business dimension with global corporations benefiting from state policies, which are at the same time suppressing the local high-quality journals.…”

“…It is also linked with the principle of collaboration, which “leads to a better understanding of research among stakeholders, and stakeholders can point out research questions that are important to them" (ibid., 8–9). It is even more crucial in the case of SSH, where knowledge legitimation “demands not only scientific peers but also society” ( Kulczycki et al , 2019b , 10).…”

Journal lists in social sciences and the spectrum of quality standards

“…The second journal literature consists of local journals, sometimes called national, domestic, "small", "emerging", or "peripheral" journals (Bocanegra-Valle, 2019). The audience of local journals tends to be smaller, which has a negative effect on research visibility as reflected in, e.g., citation counts (Kulczycki et al, 2019). Typically, most or all articles in a local journal are written in a local language.…”