Science in Russia: list of resuscitation measures
The number of active scientists in the Russian Federation is ten times lower than in Western countries
The Russian Association for the Promotion of Science (RASN) is a public organization that was established in 2011.
The first report of the Association on the state of science in the Russian Federation was prepared on behalf of the head of the RAS Presidium, Academician Evgeny Velikhov.
The document notes that the number of effective research teams in the Russian fundamental science for civil purposes can be estimated based on the number of articles published in peer-reviewed scientific journals and reflected in international databases.
"At the moment in Russia, this number can be estimated at 20-30 thousand – which is an order of magnitude less than the number of such groups in developed countries, adjusted for the total population.
Moreover, in reality, only about 5-7 thousand of them can be attributed to really efficient and sufficiently qualified groups, at least in the field of natural and exact sciences," the report says.
"In the last two years, in addition, the tendency to reduce the number of effective research teams has resumed – as can be judged by the dynamics of publication activity," the authors of the report write.
To counteract these trends, they consider it necessary, in particular, to improve financing mechanisms, support young personnel, and develop an expertise system.
In addition, the report points to the need to support leading scientific schools – strong and internationally recognized research teams. However, as the authors of the report complain, the support system for such schools is characterized by opaque expertise and low funding.
"So, the grant of the scientific school is currently 0.5 million rubles a year, which is 30 times lower than the reasonable amount that should be allocated to support one of the selected best scientific schools throughout Russia," the document says.
The report proposes to multiply funding and strengthen the expertise of grants from leading scientific schools.
In order to strengthen the examination system, RASN considers it expedient "to involve the Russian–speaking foreign diaspora in the examination, and for projects with financing over 10 million rubles a year (with the exception of areas related to defense topics) - foreign scientists who do not have Russian roots."
These measures, together with the development of the grant system, will, according to the authors of the document, achieve the goal set in the decree of the President of the Russian Federation of May 7 to increase the share of publications of Russian researchers in world scientific journals indexed in the Web of Science database to 2.44%.
The full text of the report (120 pages) is published on the RASN–VM website.
Portal "Eternal youth" http://vechnayamolodost.ru11.12.2012