Keywords
higher education
evaluation of research
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Abstract
The Law on Higher Education and Science adopted by the Polish parliament in July 2018 made extensive changes to the model of the institutional evaluation of research. The evaluated output consists mainly of papers published in scientific journals. In principle, the journals eligible for the evaluation procedure are those indexed in Scopus or WoS. The official Polish ranking of journals should reflect the metrics from these databases. The statutory enlargement of bibliometric data on the evaluation of legal papers constitutes a fundamental breach in the history of Polish legal journals. The article deals with a few questions: how representative is the application of the bibliometrics for legal publications? Is the Polish ranking of legal journals consistent with the evaluation practices in other countries? What is unique in the caesura in the history of Polish legal journals marked by the law from 2018, when compared to earlier turning points in this history? What recommendations to change the evaluation legal journals in Poland are justified? The author sees the evaluation of legal journals focused on Scopus and WoS as an unwanted revolution. Using comparative, historical and pragmatical arguments, he recommends the transformation of the revolution into evolutive modifications. This reasonable evolution should be based on two things. Firstly, replacing bibliometric evaluation with expert evaluation. Secondly, more legal journals should be eligible in the evaluation process: journals indexed in ERIH+ and HeinOnline, and journals included in the official journal lists of countries other than Poland, should be taken into account.
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