In the decision adopted on Wednesday, September 22, regarding the announcement by the Minister of Education and Science, inviting editors of scientific journals to submit applications for a new list of scientific journals, the Committee on Legal Sciences of the State Council. The Polish Academy of Sciences reminds of the need to comply with the procedures in this matter regulated by the Regulation of the Minister for Science and Higher Education of November 7, 2018 on the preparation of lists of scientific studies, scientific journals and materials reviewed from international conferences (ie. Journal of Laws 2020, item 349).
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There will be grounds to appeal the decision
– Violations of the law in the process of developing this list will have The negative impact on the quality and credibility of the scientific unit evaluation process planned for 2022, and may form the basis for judicial questioning of the decisions that will be taken as a result of this process – We read in the resolution. In the context of the announced list, the Committee on Legal Sciences of the Polish Academy of Sciences draws attention to the difficulties in creating a list of not only Polish, but also foreign legal scientific journals.
Disputed citation databases
According to the authors of the resolution, The Web of Science and Scopus databases contain such small content of Polish and European journals in the field of legal science that they should not be the only and independent basis for creating an authoritative ranking of these journals. At the same time, the Committee on Legal Sciences of the Polish Academy of Sciences strongly emphasizes that the ratio of published articles to the number of citations is the most reliable, reliable and impartial criterion in establishing the ranking of scientific journals. Therefore, the Committee recommends, in relation to law journals, that it is useful to use available citation data from other sources, including Google Scholar.
The Committee on Legal Sciences of the Polish Academy of Sciences suggests that in the list prepared by the Minister of Education and Science, journals with the lowest quotation and published articles should not get more points than journals with the highest score. Attached to the decision is an exemplary list of several dozen Polish legal journals with data on the number of articles published in them and the number of citations.
