Gaming with Science? Review: Kulczycki, E. (2023). Evaluation Game. How Publication Metrics Shape Scholarly Communication. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, viii+228 pp.

Abstract

This review critically examines Emanuel Kulczycki’s monograph Evaluation Game. How Publication Metrics Shape Scholarly Communication (Cambridge University Press, 2023), a reflective and historically grounded study of research evaluation systems in Poland and globally. The authors analyze how the rhetoric and practice of “excellence” have become institutionalized in science policy, particularly in Poland, and evaluate Kulczycki’s autoethnographic, text-oriented approach to scientometrics. While appreciating the book’s narrative power—especially its use of case studies and the central metaphor of the “game”—the reviewers question its empirical grounding, conceptual framing, and the absence of key theoretical frameworks such as Wittgenstein’s language games or Kuhn’s paradigms. They note that the book reads more as a metascientific manifesto than a sociological study. The review closes with a critique of recent Polish science policy reforms, contextualizing Kulczycki’s work within broader concerns about power, truth, and the bureaucratization of knowledge.