  The academic performance indicators of the Doctor of Science title, the
highest and most prestigious qualification awarded by the Hungarian Academy of
Sciences (HAS), are key in the national assessment system. The types of
performance indicators, as well as their minimum values, are incorporated into
the application requirements of academic promotions, scientific qualifications,
and research scholarships. HAS has proposed a reform of these performance
indicators, to align with the current national and global trends. The proposed
modifications are generally based on arbitrary decisions and the consensus
between academicians, namely, the representatives of the sections of HAS. This
paper contains a bibliometric analysis of 25,000 publications produced between
2011 and 2020 by 683 researchers affiliated with HAS's Section of Earth
Sciences. The bibliometric data of the publications are processed by integer
and fractional counting, respectively. The main goal of the paper is to argue
that discipline-specific co-authorship patterns should be accounted for in the
assessment procedure. It is also shown that the homogenization of the
performance indicators and the rigid use of the integer counting method favour
hard natural science disciplines and disadvantage social science disciplines.
Finally, I describe some components of an alternative publishing strategy which
would be most prudent for researchers, given the proposed assessment criteria.
