Italian studies in Poland: a perspective from bibliometric research, 2000-2020

The paper offers an analysis of the complete body of research writings produced between 2000 and 2020 by all Polish Italian Studies scholars currently affiliated with university faculties and departments of the two major disciplines of modern philology: linguistics and literary studies. The argument is based on the bibliometric data compiled as part of the research project ‘Bibliography of Italian Studies in Poland: Digital Repository, Text Digitization, Bibliometrics’, under which 2716 publications authored by 139 scholars from 19 Polish research institutions were analysed. The statistics presented in the paper cover the type of research publication, language, place of publication, the author’s affiliation relative to the place of publication and the number of authors. Our findings indicate that Polish Italian Studies scholars mainly choose to publish chapters in collected volumes (mostly conference proceedings), with their contributions being single-authored and written in Italian (meaning that their research is largely geared to an Italian-speaking readership, and collaborative research projects are very rare). Their research papers were as a rule published in Polish journals, often those published by university faculties, and the internationalisation of research (publishing in languages other than Polish) was only apparent. Slow changes in publishing practices have been observable in recent years as a consequence of the guidelines of the Ministry of Education and Science on the assessment of research performance and the promotion of publication in foreign journals and publishing houses.