direct requirements for the publication activity of scientists have a limited impact on the result

Direct requirements for the publication activity of scientists have a limited impact on the result, as stated by researchers at the Institute of Statistical Research and Economics of Knowledge (ISSEK) of the National Research University Higher School of Economics Leonid Gokhberg, Tatyana Kuznetsova and Maxim Kotsemir in the article “From the Soviet Union to the Russian Federation: the dynamics of publication activity in the evolution of national science policy “, published in the journal Scientometrics. Thus, until the early 1990s, the United States accounted for 40% of the world volume of publications indexed by the Web of Science Core Collection (WoS CC) bibliometric system; the share of the USSR, Germany, Japan, France and Canada was 4–8%. At the same time, the dynamics of the USSR’s publishing activity was lower than the world average, and its share in the total volume fell – from 6.01% in 1975 to 5.03% in 1989. At the end of the Soviet period, the decline became even more noticeable: in 1992, the country’s share was only 3.47%. The Russian Federation inherited this dynamic: in 1995 the figure was 2.83%, in 2000 – 2.7%, the minimum was in 2012 – 1.79%.

In 2013–2019, however, the trend turned toward an increase in the Russian Federation’s share in world science. As the researchers note, this was largely influenced by a number of scientific policy measures aimed at stimulating publication activity. In 2017–2019, the Russian Federation’s share in the global number of publications was 2.7–2.9%, returning to the level of the 1990s. One of these measures is the “Project 5–100” initiative to increase the competitiveness of leading Russian universities. Target indicators for its participants, among other things, included the number of publications in journals indexed by Web of Science and Scopus; the same requirements were contained in the conditions for receiving grants from the Russian Science Foundation.

However, spending on science in 2012–2019 did not exceed 1.11% of GDP, which is lower than in leading countries, and the number of researchers decreased from 726.3 thousand people in 2012 to 682.5 thousand in 2019. As a result, the effect of introducing indicators on the number of publications turned out to be limited (see graph), and an analysis of the situation shows that in the long term, macroeconomic conditions for R&D, the investment climate and the quality of institutions have a more systemic impact on science, the researchers believe.

Venera Petrova