Unnatural selection

Dear editors !

Dear colleagues! I congratulate you all on the recent day of Russian science. Let our service are difficult for the people (especially now!) And at first glance, as if, as if, is not visible, but the success of our labors guarantees a bright and safe future of the country. Conversely, our failures and failures will condemn Russia to the economic crisis, survival and make it defenseless before external aggression. In general, on February 8, I raised my glass, and then a glass for all of us, my dear colleagues, for Russian scientists!

The next morning, my condition was not very joyful: having met a professional holiday in high spirits, the next day I was acutely worried whether we could be at the height of our responsible mission. And, thinking about this, I understood that we ourselves, without the help of the authorities, could hardly be on top.

We are too mired in the routine, we are lazy, we tend to turn a blind eye to our own and other people's shortcomings, along with strong scientists in our scientific institutions, many scientists work so -so and even, say, faint scientists directly. We are not able to self -clean ourselves and establish natural selection in our ranks, so that only the most powerful and the best, capable of ensuring the solution of the tasks facing Russian science and the country, remain in the ranks.

And - here my heart is filled with joy - our leadership understands all this perfectly and prepares documents that will help organize forced selection of the best and most worthy. In particular, this is a draft Regulation on the certification of researchers, developed by the Ministry of Education and Science.

Having familiarized myself with this project, I saw a clear and honest plan that allows you to establish a strict and impartial mechanism for sorting researchers on the basis of objective indicators. What a sin to hide, usually the certification process goes through us quite formally: certificate and certificates who have known each other for more than a dozen years, do not at all have the desire to change something.

The document, which will soon be accepted, offers a completely different order. Each scientific employee in the employment contract will have to prescribe the planned indicators that he must achieve. The number of articles that he must publish is the impact factors of the magazines in which they must be published, the number of reports made at conferences, prepared graduate students, the amount of the attracted financing-well, and so on.

You ask, from what ceiling will these numbers be taken? I answer: they will not be taken from the ceiling, but on the basis of objective data obtained as a result of the assessment of scientific institutions. Planned numbers for employees will be established on the basis of information about average indicators in the group of institutes of a similar profile.

And when the harsh year of certification comes, the institute’s special employee will accommodate the obtained indicators with the specified. If the indicators of the certified employee are no worse than the installed, then this employee will be certified automatically. If not, then the conversation will be honest with him - the certification commission will expertly consider what this employee does.

Thus, the processes of increasing the efficiency of our science will go to micro and macro levels. There will be an assessment of not only employees, but also organizations. And those organizations that in their reference group will show indicators noticeably worse than the average will be reorganized and even liquidation. Accordingly, the average indicators will become higher, scientific employees will put more and more stringent standards and they will have to work more and more intensively. Of course, there are critics who will say that it is unreasonable to establish some planned standards based on the average indicators of institutions, that, depending on the specifics of activity, the scientific direction, typical formal indicators of activity can vary greatly. And therefore, such formalism, orientation on the average temperature in the surrounding hospitals, can lead to severe consequences for entire directions of science and many working groups.

But, I think, all this criticism is not on the case: in a difficult environment there is no place for the tasty! There is nothing to deal with any prospect of publications and impacts of garbage, it is necessary to engage only in the fact that it is promising in terms of quick return and annual reporting. And write, write, write.

Your Ivan Ekonomov