The aim of this paper is twofold. Firstly, I present the scholarly book publications patterns of Polish scholars. Secondly, I show how scholarly book publications are assessed in various European research evaluation systems. Moreover, I argue that the diversity of evaluation models depends on the scientific policy aims in a given country. This presentation of European models allows me to discuss a new Polish science policy instrument, that is the list of publishers prepared for the upcoming evaluation exercise in 2021. In 2018, the Ministry of Science and Higher Education in Poland implemented a new model of scholarly book publication assessment based on the list of publishers. On the one hand, such a science policy instrument might be a way to appreciate the best quality scholarly books and give them more points than articles in the evaluation exercise. On the other hand, it is a so far unknown instrument which differentiates publications that have been treated the same up to date. Additionally, this paper aims to shed some light on how the new Polish model was prepared.

We examined the male-female collaboration practices of all internationally visible Polish university professors (N = 25,463) based on their Scopus-indexed publications from 2009–2018 (158,743 journal articles). We merged a national registry of 99,935 scientists with the Scopus publication database, using probabilistic and deterministic record linkage. Our database (“The Polish Science Observatory”) included all professors with at least a doctoral degree employed in 85 researchinvolved universities. We determined an “individual publication portfolio” for every professor. The gender homophily principle (publishing predominantly with scientists of the same sex) was found to apply to male scientists — but not to females. The majority of male scientists collaborate solely with males; most female scientists, in contrast, do not collaborate with females at all. Gender homophily in research-intensive institutions proved stronger for males than for females. Finally, we used a multi-dimensional fractional logit regression model to estimate the impact of gender and other individual-level and institutional-level independent variables on gender homophily in research collaboration.