Changes and Impact of Minimum Publication Requirements for University Full Professor Applications in Social Sciences in Hungary

Abstract

On 1 Septem­ber 2020, the Guidelines for the pre­par­a­tion and eval­u­ation of uni­versity full pro­fessor ap­plic­a­tions, as amended by the Hun­garian Ac­cred­it­a­tion Com­mit­tee's De­cision 2020/6/IV/2 and ad­op­ted by the Board De­cision 2019/5/VII/4, entered into force. The re­vised re­quire­ment sys­tem rep­res­ents the trans­form­a­tion of the pre­vi­ous bench­marks. The focus of aca­demic per­form­ance has shif­ted to journal pub­lic­a­tions but bey­ond do­mestic pub­lic­a­tions, in­ter­na­tional pub­lic­a­tions – a pre­requis­ite for in­ter­na­tional vis­ib­il­ity and a prom­in­ent place in qual­ity rank­ing – have also be­come a con­di­tion for achiev­ing aca­demic de­grees. The present study ex­am­ines the im­pact and con­sequences of the new re­quire­ments on uni­versity full pro­fessor ap­plic­a­tions and, more broadly, on in­ter­na­tional aca­demic re­cog­ni­tion, through the pub­lic­a­tion activ­it­ies of lec­tur­ers at Hun­garian uni­versit­ies with a pro­file in eco­nom­ics and so­cial sci­ences. Does the “new” reg­u­la­tion of the Hun­garian Ac­cred­it­a­tion Com­mit­tee af­fect the sci­entific pro­gress of the in­di­vidual and the com­munity or in­sti­tu­tion?