Academic research evaluation in artistic disciplines: the case of Poland

Abstract

This study focuses on the evaluation of artistic disciplines (visual and performing arts) within performance-based university research funding systems. It offers an analysis of the Polish academic research evaluation system and investigates its effects on the scholarly productivity of artists-academics. Poland has adopted a performance-based research funding system that includes evaluation of artistic productions (without considering them as 'research') and developed a comprehensive quantification of artistic achievements. We analyse data from the Polish Current Research Information System on 136,894 outputs submitted by 93 art faculties for two evaluation exercises (in 2013 and 2017). Our findings demonstrate a change in scholarly productivity of artists-academics towards publication practices characteristic for science-oriented disciplines. We also find that art departments located in universities exhibit a greater tendency for changing publication practices than departments located in independent art schools. The findings from this study demonstrate that both: (1) the designs of national research evaluation systems and (2) the structures of higher education may influence scholarly outcomes in practice-based disciplines.

Who Controls the National Academic Promotion System: An Analysis of Power Distribution in Poland

“…The Polish system of academic degrees is highly centralized, and includes two degrees beyond the level of the Ph.D. (Achmatowicz, 2011; Brzeziński, 2017; Kierznowski, 2021; Kosmulski, 2015a; Lewandowska & Kulczycki, 2021; Stec, 2021; Wojtczak, 2019). The process of awarding these life-time higher degrees is regulated at the state level, and overseen by the CK (see above), or—for the most recent cases—by a newly established though similar body (with quite a few members sitting on both) termed Rada Doskonałości Naukowej (“Council for Research Excellence”).…”

Research Impact Education: A Systems Perspective on Two Competing Views of Higher Education

“…Australian researchers have commented upon the limits of impact assessment tools, being unable to fully understand more qualitative longitudinal forms of research impact [18]. Midterm adopter nations such as Poland and Sweden have remarked that there need not be a necessary logical link between research quality and the scale of impact [19], or how the very nomenclature of research institutions influence what types of impact claims become possible or not [20]. Notably, even Finland which, does not yet have an official research impact evaluation system as such, is nevertheless subject to have the very impact logic becoming all pervasive as well within its Higher Education system [21].…”

“…With an increase in specialization and a constantly growing field of research expertise, this is increasingly less and less the case, and hence the requirement for trust becomes ever greater [67]. Therefore, metrics and outcome judgements become a convenient shorthand for determining the quality of research, albeit there is an acknowledgment that research output quality and research impact do not have to have a causal link [19]. Subsequently, as rankings fulfil this convenient simplification function, they persist.…”

The game of academic publishing: a review of gamified publication practices in the social sciences

“…With the marketization of knowledge, academic publishing has been reframed as an international (and unequal) game in the recent decade. Authors use metaphors in their analysis, such as "playing field" (Martinez and Sá, 2020), "young people's game" (Sakai, 2019), "indicator game" (Fochler and De Rijcke, 2017) or "evaluation game" (Lewandowska and Kulczycki, 2022). This tournament-like game (Backes-Gellner and Schlinghoff, 2010) is described as driven by the numbers and rankings provided by major databases, such as Web of Science (WoS), Scopus and Google Scholar (Martinez and Sá, 2020).…”

“…This tournament-like game (Backes-Gellner and Schlinghoff, 2010) is described as driven by the numbers and rankings provided by major databases, such as Web of Science (WoS), Scopus and Google Scholar (Martinez and Sá, 2020). Part of publishing is beating these international bibliometric measurements for career rationales (Fochler and De Rijcke, 2017), or simply to survive in academia (Lewandowska and Kulczycki, 2022). This is because departments, funding agencies and universities support and incentivize specific publishing venues and their measurement (Ossenblok et al, 2012;Fejes and Nylander, 2014;Korytkowski and Kulczycki, 2019;Sile and Vanderstraeten, 2019;Deutz et al, 2021).…”