“Let’s keep the main thing secret”: scientists welcomed the abolition of mandatory publications in foreign journals

by time news

The Ministry of Science and Higher Education of the Russian Federation was entrusted with developing its own system for evaluating scientists, refusing to count publications in scientific foreign journals. What has long been called for in the Russian Academy of Sciences and in each individual institute has come true. Alas, for this it was necessary to flare up … a special operation in Ukraine and sanctions. It turns out that our government is like that peasant who, until the thunder breaks out, does not cross himself.

“Yes, what is there to develop ?! scientists say. “Take away the management of scientific activity from the hands of officials, transfer it to the hands of the scientists themselves, who know a lot about this!”

The decision to abandon the requirement for publications in foreign scientific journals was announced on March 7 by Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Chernyshenko.

We are talking about publications included in the Web of Science and Scopus citation systems. Three years ago, the Ministry of Education and Science introduced a methodology for evaluating scientists by the number of publications in such journals. And it began – whoever has a higher rating, that and more money, and if we are talking about the teaching staff of universities – the allocation of additional budget places, new equipment and other “cookies”. But is it fair?

Mathematician, Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences Boris Kashin believes that this system of scientometrics, if it is the main one, cannot lead to anything good: “This is a pro-Western system that makes us dependent,” he says. – In Australia, where I was two years ago, scientometrics was taken into account earlier, but the Australians abandoned this when they realized that they were simply cheating points at the expense of real results. Here’s an example: in 1978 I published a work in the Bulletin of the Georgian Academy of Sciences. An untranslated edition, published exclusively in Russian… For all the time there were only two references to the article. And in 2021, Israeli scientists, taking this system of mine as a basis, solved an important problem. Is this the result? Result. But how can it be taken into account by the existing scientometrics?”.

Scientometrics cannot be the only evaluation criterion, Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences Andrey Zabrodsky confirms: “If a scientist who should develop new varieties of wheat is constantly forced to write articles, these varieties in reality can not wait. Or take writers who were forced to publish works on the poetry of Pushkin and Lermontov in English. Well, who needed it? I’m not talking about researchers from the field of social sciences who wrote scientific papers for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and generally had no right to publish because of secrecy requirements. It turns out that representatives of the natural sciences have always been in the lead in the ranking. Was it fair? Of course not. All this made scientists very nervous.”

In addition to the inexpediency of such publications, they had one more disadvantage: our scientists paid money for them to private foreign WoS and Scopus databases. According to Zabrodsky, in total, Russian scientists sent about $50 million to their journals every year! Someone took money from the personal budget, someone from the budget of the university or institute. That is, we spent gigantic sums for no one knows why? But they could develop their scientific periodicals with great success.

“The real contribution can be directly assessed only by how the achievements of science are used in the economy,” says Deputy President of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Corresponding Member Vladimir Ivanov. – Do you remember how we evaluated the creation of the atomic bomb? If publications had been put at the forefront then, neither the project, nor we would have probably existed. The same thing happened in space science. It is also important to take into account that the end result – a new rocket or reactor – can only appear on the basis of the development of our own fundamental research.

So, according to Ivanov, if we want to develop independently, to become world leaders in science, this chain must be fully ensured. Making a bet on the purchase of foreign technologies, we will always lag behind.

What happens with the articles? Ivanov asks. – The Ministry sets the task that we publish all our fundamental research in foreign journals. That is, they themselves gave their results, in which they could have a clear advantage, abroad. At the same time, everyone understands that the Western technological level is much higher than ours, which means that there is an opportunity to implement all this faster.

Remember how mobile communication appeared. Our Zhores Ivanovich Alferov created a fundamental reserve – heterogeneous structures. Only in our country they could not master them, but in the West they could. And where is American electronics now, and where is ours? But this is a strategically important industry.

– So, it was necessary to classify the heterogeneous structures of Alferov?

– In principle, they do this with strategically important scientific developments. So, how do you think, how did the USSR become aware that the Americans began to develop nuclear weapons? It’s simple – our scientists have noticed that the results of fundamental research in the field of nuclear physics have ceased to be published. Reported to the leadership of the country. The country’s leadership made the right conclusions, and in the end we were able to catch up with the Americans. It’s not worth hiding everything, of course. In each case, it is necessary to approach the issue very carefully.

In the meantime, it turns out that we are giving everything away right away. There is, for example, a government decree of December 31, 2020 “On approval of the program of fundamental scientific research”, which states that 75% of our articles published in WoS and Scopus must be published in co-authorship with foreign scientists.

– What explains this?

– Nothing, no one knows where such a requirement came from …

– So, what criteria should be used to evaluate the effectiveness of science in the first place?

– Those who make decisions at the top need to understand that the basis of any technological breakthrough is fundamental science and it cannot be formalized, it cannot be driven into frames. The importance of this or that discovery can only be assessed by an expert, and only scientists are capable of this. By the way, before the reform of the Russian Academy of Sciences in 2013, this was the case. The Academy managed the program of fundamental research and itself distributed the money for them, depending on the requirements of the time and the development of world scientific thought. The administrators who are today given the functions of determining the prospects of certain studies clearly do not have the necessary potential for this.

But the most interesting thing is that the new system was instructed to develop the same ministry without the participation of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

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