Keywords
running for points
impactitis
Poland
research evaluation
How to Cite
Abstract
The paper uses the concept of ‘parametric game’ to describe a strategy of academic work which has become wide-spread in Poland, due to the introduction of a particular policy of rewards. The ‘parametric game’ consists of doing research and publishing results in so as to enable fulfilling the requirements of a given research evaluation system. On the whole, researchers can use two main strategies in this game. The first strategy is ‘Impactitis,’ where only publications in journals with a high Impact Factor are acknowledged by a given scholarly community. The other strategy, whose definition and understanding are put forward in the present paper, is the so-called ‘running for points’ (the original Polish term being ‘punktoza’). In this strategy, the most ‘profitable’ choice is to publish several articles in journals without any Impact Factor rather than one paper in a toptier journal. On the basis of the Polish system, I present the main mechanisms that produce the running-for-points strategy and several mechanisms that make it possible to reduce the negative consequences of playing the parametric game in this way. The article concludes with a discussion of the Polish system. It suggests how the system can be improved and what lessons can be learnt from it. The conclusions are relevant for both scholars and policy makers in other countries.
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