No fewer publications from RSF grant recipients

The Russian Science Foundation (RSF) has published data on the results of its work in 2022. Alexander Khlunov, head of the Russian Science Foundation, the largest state institution that provides Russian researchers with research grants, stated that the circumstances in which the scientific community of the Russian Federation found itself last year (a significant reduction in contacts with part of the world scientific community after the start of the Russian military operation in Ukraine, a wave of emigration), did not prevent the fund from fulfilling the main task of last year – an increase from 24 billion to 32 billion rubles. the volume of grants distributed by the foundation (growth in the number of projects – from 5.1 thousand to 8.2 thousand) and maintaining the publication activity of authors supported by the RSF. It should be noted that the “grant machine” of the Russian Science Foundation is inertial in any case: the circumstances of 2020-2022 include, among other things, a pandemic, which also affects the activity of the community. Nevertheless, the RSF has reason to believe that the fund’s model suffered no losses in implementation last year.

The RSF considers publication activity on scientific research within the framework of previously issued grants to be one of the effectiveness criteria: for 2022, it practically did not fall (see diagram) against the background of an obvious drop since 2019 in the total number of publications of scientists from the Russian Federation, for example, according to Web of Science metrics Core Collection (WOS). The “quality of publications supported by the Russian Science Foundation” is evident from the dynamics of publications in the top quartile (Q1) of WoS of such articles: in 2018 it was 31.5%, in 2022 – 37.8%. In the top 10 scientific journals in which RSF grantees have published, journals devoted to chemistry, materials science, and oncology stand out (chemistry, materials science, engineering sciences – but not medicine – receive the largest share of RSF funding, more than a third). The list of organizations whose employees were supported by RSF grants is conservative: in the top 5, as before, are Moscow State University, St. Petersburg State University, ITMO, Kazan University, and the Higher School of Economics. Researchers in the Northwestern Federal District have mastered the grant system best of all (including due to the activity of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences), where there are 52.3 RSF grants per 1 thousand researchers — in the Central Federal District the figure is 20.7, in the Northwestern Federal District – the least RF, 10. The population of young researchers-grant recipients is the largest in the Central Federal District.

Dmitry Butrin