Advisory Team to the President of the Polish Academy of Sciences for the evaluation of the quality of scientific activities has been established

On March 7, by the decision of the President of the Polish Academy of Sciences, Prof. Marek Konarzewski, an Advisory Team to the President of the Polish Academy of Sciences for the evaluation of the quality of scientific activities was established.

Composition of the Team

The Chairman of the Team is Prof. Andrzej Jajszczyk (AGH University of Science and Technology), and its members are Prof. Janusz Bujnicki (International Institute of Molecular and Cell Biology in Warsaw), Prof. Agnieszka Chacińska (International Institute of Molecular Mechanisms and Machines of the Polish Academy of Sciences), Prof. Justyna Olko (University of Warsaw), Dr. Piotr Sankowski, Prof. UW (President of IDEAS NCBR sp. z o.o.), Prof. Maciej Żylicz (Foundation for Polish Science).

Scope of work of the Team

The purpose of the work of the Team is to develop changes in the principles of evaluation of the quality of scientific activity in accordance with the provisions of the Agreement on reforming Research Assessment, whose signatory is, among others, the Polish Academy of Sciences. The changes are to include:

• • principles for evaluating the quality of scientific journals, scientific monographs and conference materials that are components of the evaluation of the quality of scientific activity;
  • the rules for evaluating the quality of the activities of scientific institutions, including the evaluation of the quality of education at doctoral schools.

Selected postulates developed by other bodies

The Presidium of the Conference of Rectors of Academic Schools in Poland indicates that the list of publications of peer-reviewed scientific monographs has not met the expectations of the community. The solution could be to assign scores directly to scientific monographs and, in the case of outstanding items, to reward them with additional scores. The submitted document also talks about simplifying the journal evaluation system and developing an additional list of Polish scientific journals. The rectors also mention diversifying the sets of reference values for different types of scientific units and considering the possibility of including conference publications from all scientific disciplines in the evaluation of researchers’ achievements. There are naturally more postulates, and the changes are argued by streamlining the current system and eliminating the obvious imperfections noted during the last evaluation and categorization.

A joint position on the evaluation of scientific activity was also developed by the Polish Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Batory Foundation and the Foundation for Polish Science. It contains, among other things, a proposal to abandon the use of parametric evaluation for individual evaluation of researchers in favor of the scientific content of the work. Mention should also be made of the proposal to adjust the evaluation of research achievements to the specific nature and area of research conducted. Criticism was voiced regarding the evaluation of scientific units based on parametric indicators; according to those gathered, it should be based on expert evaluation of scientific achievements.