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.