The article aims to characterize the evaluation of Polish scientific journals in the fields of the humanities and social sciences, in the broader context of national science and higher education reforms. For this purpose, the notion of resentment rationalism, referring to Max Scheler’s work, was introduced to highlight the disorganization of successive attempts to rebuild the system of science rooted in evil and atavistic passions. As a consequence of the adopted research optics, what emerges is a picture of chaotic, politicized and commodified reforms, which fail to correct the position of Polish science and antagonize the community of researchers, by making it impossible to deal with important structural problems in this field.