Research Evaluation and the Illusion of Excellence: Rethinking Q1 Journal Rankings

Serhii Nazarovets is a Ukrainian researcher working at the intersection of scientometrics, scholarly communication, research integrity, and science policy. He is a Senior Researcher at Borys Grinchenko Kyiv Metropolitan University, where he studies how research systems are organised, evaluated, and transformed under changing social, political, and technological conditions.

His work explores the infrastructures that shape contemporary science – from journal evaluation systems and scholarly publishing to open science, bibliometric databases, research integrity, and the growing role of artificial intelligence in research. Rather than treating metrics as neutral indicators, he examines how they influence researchers’ behaviour, institutional priorities, and science policy. His recent studies have addressed research misconduct, paper mills, responsible research assessment, scholarly communication during wartime, and the governance of AI in academic publishing.

Growing up and working in Ukraine has fundamentally shaped his research perspective. Since the beginning of Russia’s full-scale invasion, much of his work has focused on how research systems adapt to crisis: how international collaboration changes during war, how scholarly communication remains resilient under disruption, and how academic institutions continue to produce, evaluate, and preserve knowledge despite unprecedented challenges. These experiences have reinforced his broader interest in scholarly infrastructures – not only as technical systems, but as social institutions that sustain research communities.

At CEFRES, Serhii will develop the project Research Evaluation and the Illusion of Excellence: Rethinking Q1 Journal Rankings. The project examines how journal classification systems create symbolic hierarchies of academic prestige and how these hierarchies influence research assessment, particularly in the social sciences and humanities. Combining bibliometric analysis with qualitative case studies, the project seeks to contribute to current international debates on responsible research assessment, including the implementation of DORA and CoARA principles.

CV

Education

2015 – PhD in Social Communication Science, Kharkiv State Academy of Culture, Ukraine.

2009 – Master’s Degree in Philosophy, Ivan Franko National University of Lviv, Ukraine.

Current position

Since 2021 – Senior Researcher, Borys Grinchenko Kyiv Metropolitan University (Kyiv, Ukraine).

Previous positions

• 2017–2021 – Deputy Director for Research, State Scientific and Technical Library of Ukraine.
• 2015–2017 – Director, Library of the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy.
• 2014–2019 – Senior Lecturer, Kyiv National University of Culture and Arts.

Selected publications

• Nazarovets, S. (2026). Scientific misconduct, questionable research practices, and research climate: empirical approaches to integrity problems. Research Integrity and Peer Review, 11(1), 22. https://doi.org/10.1186/s41073-026-00214-1
• Nazarovets, S. (2026). Scientific collaboration without flights: Ukraine’s wartime adaptation. Scientometrics. 131, 1991–1995. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-026-05576-3
• Nazarovets, S. (2026). APC waivers and Ukraine’s publishing output in Gold OA journals: Evidence from five commercial publishers. Journal of Data and Information Science. 11(1), 88-104. https://doi.org/10.2478/jdis-2025-0059
• Teixeira da Silva, J. A., & Nazarovets, S. (2026). The publish or perish, publish and perish, publish then perish, and now retract and perish cultures in academia. Naunyn-Schmiedeberg’s Archives of Pharmacology, 399, 3115–3131. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00210-025-04651-5
• Suchikova, Y., Tsybuliak, N., Teixeira da Silva, J. A., & Nazarovets, S. (2026). GAIDeT (Generative AI Delegation Taxonomy): A taxonomy for humans to delegate tasks to generative artificial intelligence in scientific research and publishing. Accountability in Research, 33(3). https://doi.org/10.1080/08989621.2025.2544331