Studia Historiae Scientiarum recently published an article by Michał Kokowski in the section “Bibliometry, science policy, science communication”. It is titled ‘Introduction to the topic of the working session “Polish scientific journals from disciplines: «history and philosophy of science» and «science of science» – current challenges” (Kraków, 25 June 2019)’ and specific proposals of organizational, editorial and legislative solutions
In this post on our blog, Michał Kokowski explains the why he became interested in such a topic and sketches the most important achievements of his research.
Could you present the subject of your article to your readers?
MK:
I am interested in the development of niche scientific disciplines in Poland: “history and philosophy of science” and “science studies”.
The implementation of the “Act 2.0” and the new model for assessing journals by the Ministry of Science and Higher Education of the Polish Government has made it necessary to rethink the situation of Polish scientific journals in these disciplines.
For this reason, on June 25, 2019, as a part of work of the PAU Commission on the History of Science, I organized a working conference dedicated to analyzing these issues, in order to identify the current state and the possibility to changing it by improving publishing and legislative standards.
Regarding the issue of publishing standards:
- On the one hand, we should firmly follow in our journals the principle of reliable citation by the authors of all the sources used in the articles (regardless whether the publications are indexed by international databases or their authors are Polish), as this will not only increase the ethical standards of journals, but also increase the number of citations;
- On the other hand, we should strive to introduce the largest possible number of Polish journals from these disciplines to international indexing databases, including Scopus, WoS, DOAJ and ICI, because it will increase the visibility of Polish publications in these databases and will lead to a higher rank of Polish science on an international scale.
Regarding legislative issues:
- The key issue is the fact that the model for assessing journals adopted in Poland does not take into account the specificity of the history and philosophy of science and the science of science, or many others that “live” at the intersection of at least two independent research disciplines.
This fact is a clear manifestation of the insufficient knowledge of science by the creators of the Polish model of journal evaluation. It is all the more paradoxical that this discipline was created in Poland in 1910–1930 by the Lviv-Warsaw philosophical school and the Józef Mianowski Fund …
- For the sake of the development of Polish science, I propose to change the model of assessing journals so that it takes into account the specificity of niche research issues.
I am refering to the full article:
Michał Kokowski, Introduction to the subject of the working session “Polish scientific journals from disciplines: «history and philosophy of science» and «science of science» – current challenges” (Kraków, 25 June 2019) and specific proposals of organizational, editorial and legislative solutions
and two other related articles:
Michał Kokowski, Working session “Polish scientific journals from disciplines: «history and philosophy of science» and «science of science» – current challenges” (Kraków, 25 June 2019)
Michał Kokowski, “Lists of journals of the Ministry of Science and Higher Education in Poland 2017 & 2019”, “ICI Journal Master List 2014–2017”, and the Polish journals on the history of science, history, philosophy of science and science of science
