Sanctions or hack?

On September 12, 2014, Izvestia published an article “Russian scientists refuse publications and grants abroad,” which many media reinforced immediately [1]. The main thesis of this article can be judged by insert. The main complaints of refusing the publication of articles sound from the lips of employees of the Institute of Chemical Physics of the Russian Academy of Sciences (its director is Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences Sergey Aldoshin). We publish the responses of famous Russian scientists in which they comment on whether such sanctions are possible in reality.

Mikhail Katsnelson , Dok. physical. Sciences, Laureate of the Spinoza Prize, professor of theoretical physics of the University of Radbood (Netherlands), member of the Royal Dutch Academy of Sciences and the European Academy:

The vast majority of scientific products are UG, which, by and large, can be printed, you can not print, and it is neither cold nor hot from this. In addition to the authors and members of their families, but, in the end, the ways that people earn for their food are a separate topic, which has nothing to do with science as such. The only way to do and publish something important is to lick and lick the work, so that, even if the whole world was against it, it could not be ignored.

Each normal scientific worker is faced with such problems without any policy (there is a “struggle of schools”, there are tasks with a very ambiguous reputation, there are areas where everyone was gnawed with everyone), and the only worthy way is to do what depends on you, that is, to improve the quality of their work, and whatever happens.

Complaints about “do not print” a very serious disqualifying feature for a scientist, even worse than links to the yellow press (such as the current Izvestia) as a serious source of information. The encouragement of the mood “we are so great, and the whole world against us” is the best way to kill science in the country, much more effective than any sanctions, even if they exist. As always, not sanctions are terrible, but the answer to them. Poor Voronezh, he is bombed and bombed.

Actually, this is not about science even. This is about the self -awareness "I was offended again", which is spiritual suicide. This, damn it, is normal that the whole world is against, and you still do your job. As I, at all, to the young, said one of the best physicists of the previous generation, “when everyone tells you-nonsense, nonsense, but you still did and proved, this is a real thing.”

Merab Mamardashvili even in the “psychological topology of the path” wrote that external problems should be solved through the solution of internal, and not vice versa. It is not the first, of course, but the wording is simple and should, in theory, are easy to remember.

Vladimir Gelman , cand. polit. Sciences, professor of the faculty of political sciences and sociology of the European University in St. Petersburg, Honored Professor of Finland (Fidipro):

The Russian media inversely reprint the “sensational” material of Izvestia that Western scientific journals allegedly refuse publications by Russian scientists, because they are Russian: such as “magazines have entered into a conspiracy” and even (the horror!) Automatically reject articles sent from Russian IP addresses. As a person who has repeatedly sent the manuscripts of articles to these magazines and acts in them with a reviewer, I declare that this is a lie. And the reasons for this lies, most likely, are not political, but administrative. Putin’s decree on the need to increase the share of Russian authors' publications in Web of Science nobody canceled, they can ask for his failure to ask - especially from the leadership of the institutes of the Academy of Sciences, whose fate in the light of reorganization of the Russian Academy of Sciences is already vague.

But it is impossible to carry out this decree: not by one that there are few articles, and not because the articles are bad, but simply because the cycle of publishing articles from the moment the manuscript is filled often takes up to two years, and the decree must be performed by 2015. And here the sanctions of the West give a completely wonderful occasion to excuse. That's it ...

“The leading scientific publications in Europe and the United States began to refuse publications to scientists from Russia. Five leading scientists from the Russian Academy of Sciences and publishers of Russian magazines working in the field of physics and chemistry told about this to Izvestia. According to scientists, the trend is associated with anti -Russian sanctions: work is sent back automatically, without reviewing - usually only after it it is decided whether the work will be published or not. There were also their tricks: if there is a foreign co-author, it is better to send an article from his IP address. Moreover, a number of scientists, in their opinion, against the background of sanctions unreasonably refused foreign grants. ”

Quote from the newspaper Izvestia http://izvestia.ru/news/576607