This article describes the history of the first journal in the field of public health in Poland in the last quarter of a century. With the political and economic transformation of the country in the 1990s, the organisation and funding of science were changed. In the social sciences, new journals were being created and the conduct of the old ones was changed. In the context of public health, it basically meant starting from scratch, although the more general issues of disease prevention and the organisation of healthcare were not only covered in medical courses, but also by a certain amount of writing in medical journals.
The journal (hereafter “Zeszyty Naukowe”) included two areas of interest in its title. One was knowledge and concern for population health (rather than disease treatment). The other, institutional change in health sector governance. Due to the wide range of topics declared for publication in the “Zeszyty Naukowe”, the publishing policy was geared towards creating monothematic issues, inviting specialists in the field to lead them. In this way, mini handbooks of important healthcare topics were created. They were of great interest and enjoyed recognition not only in the scientific community, but also in the practice of health sector policy makers. The reform of the organisation of science and the introduction of the new public management (NPM) to academic institutions; also concerned scientific journals. They were classified on the grounds of the Impact Factor score, which became the basis for evaluating the achievements of authors and the funding of journals from public funds. An important criterion was the so-called internationalisation of journals. In subsequent years, the so-called ministerial criteria, formulated by the political authorities of the Ministry of Science and Higher Education, were added. Under these conditions, “Zeszyty Naukowe” were losing points, authors’ offers and a source of funding. At the same time, the range of public health and health sector management problems was increasing dramatically (not only the Covid-19 pandemic) and the urgency of their presentation and debate was rising as well. In 2025, with subsequent political changes, efforts were made to save the “Zeszyty Naukowe” as a journal addressed to the scientific community and, at the same time, to health care practitioners.
